White Noise
by Cordria
Summary: Lost and forgotten, Danny shows up in Amity Park as a series of ghostly murders begin to rock Amity Park. Mysteries bloom around him as Danny struggles to find the source of the white noise that is drowning his town in blood and win the heart of a ghost hunter.
1. Chapter 1

**Be warned, this story is highly rated 'T' for concepts and language. **

**This story is alternate universe, meaning I'm doing with the characters what I want and when I want. It's Nickelodeon meets HBO, with a bit of Game of Thrones kicked in, just for fun. Characters do not have immunity from death, doom, and destruction.**

**That said, I have tried to keep Butch Hartman's characters as close to in-character as possible. The story is mostly canon-friendly, up through the series finale. Consider all major plot points in the show to have already happened as of the start of this story.**

**With one major exception. And you'll very soon figure out what that is…**

**Enjoy. About 15 chapters are pre-written and ready for uploading. The story is about 30 chapters long, in total. Hang on to your hats! We should see updates weekly.  
**

**-Cori**

—1—1—

"White Noise" is defined as a sound containing many frequencies with equal intensities. It is an empty drone that is often used to drown out other, perhaps bothersome noises in order to focus on the thing that matters. I use white noise while I write to balance out the chatter of the TV, the sound of the neighbor's radio, or even my own wandering thoughts. It is the supreme background noise. An endless, world-filling buzz that eventually fades away so all that is left is the one thing that really matters…

—1—1—

**White Noise**  
Chapter 1

-Saturday, August 17, 2013-

—1—1—

—Danny—

A man stood in the doorway, shoulder against the peeling paint of the door jam, and studied the documents Danny had handed over. All of them were official looking - covered in signatures and seals and sworn affidavits - and were creased and scuffed from dozens of hands shuffling through them over the last few years. Danny shifted his weight from foot to foot, waiting impatiently for the man to look over the documents.

"I dunno, kid. I only have the one…" The man's voice was rough and hoarse from years of smoking, his face pockmarked with the scars of heavy drug use. His shirt had the sleeves torn off, leaving ragged, sweat-stained edges. A smell that Danny couldn't quite place - but was quite content to never smell again - lingered in the air around him.

"I can pay upfront." Danny straightened in an attempt to look more mature than his barely-seventeen years naturally gave him, cursing his wide, child-like eyes and naturally smooth skin. "Three months. Cash."

The man chewed on his tongue, then his lip, and then brought a finger up to gnaw on. The tip of one of his fingers was tinged a dark blue. Danny wondered if it was rotting. "You have it? Now?" There was a bit of desperation to the man's voice. "Cash?"

Danny nodded.

"A hundred fifty a month. Pay in advance each month. I don't have money by the first, you're out." He shuffled through the papers one last time, not seeming to notice Danny's wince when the drool-covered finger thumbed the documents.

But a hundred fifty dollars a month wasn't something Danny could afford to pass up. Money was going to be tight for awhile.

"And you'll watch the noise. Any complaints and I'll have the police out, hear?" He handed the papers back with a grin, displaying more teeth than Danny wanted to see. What was left of them was yellowed and broken. "You hand over the cash, I'll hand over the key." There was a pause as he eyed Danny, then tacked on another sentence almost as an afterthought. "And we'll get some papers signed down the office."

When Danny had the papers securely back in his grasp, the man turned and limped into the room. It was devoid of anything but a folding table and a pile of trash in the corner. The remaining half of the sign on the door proclaimed this to be the 'offi-'.

There was a rustling noise and the man produced a single paper covered in hastily scrawled words. "Rental agreement," the man coughed. "Sign."

Danny glanced around once more, listening with more than just his ears. The place was quiet. Despite the rundown appearance and the drug-infested manager, there was something safe here for people like him.

Lost people.

He grabbed the pen from the man, careful to not actually touch his skin, and glanced over the paper. Price per month, no late fee – you're simply out if you don't pay, police can evict without warning, management cannot be held liable for accidents and 'deth'. Nodding to himself, Danny carefully wrote his name across the bottom.

"Danny Fetters, welcome to the Rusty Apartments."

The man held his hand out to shake, but Danny didn't dare. Instead, he pulled out his life savings and started to carefully count out twenty-dollar bills. Four hundred fifty dollars was most of what he had. When he triple-checked his counting, he looked up. The man's hand was still out, only this time palm up with a grin on his face. Danny dropped the money into his waiting hand.

When the man just counted and recounted the money, his eyes gleaming, Danny tapped his foot. "Key?" he finally asked.

The manager flinched and looked up at him. "Yeah, yeah." He dug through his pocket and pulled out a key. "Room seven."

"Thanks," Danny said, rubbing the grimy key against his leg. The man left, stuffing the money into his pocket. A door banged as he vanished into a room down the hall.

Absently wondering how much of his rent went to the guy's drug habit, Danny picked up his bag and headed down the hallway. Several of the lights were flickering. Something moved in a corner. Then he was in front of it – room seven. The door was solid looking, with a crooked '7' near the center. Fitting the key into the lock, Danny turned the knob and stepped into his new apartment.

It was everything he'd been told, only dirtier. The one room apartment had a small stovetop, sink, and pint-sized fridge stuffed onto a counter barely long enough to qualify as 'counter'. The bed – also the couch and dining table – was twin-size, striped bare of sheets, with a dented metal frame headboard. A toilet and closed shower curtain stood in the farthest corner near the only window. Peeling blue paint worked well with the white-painted wood floor, worn and chipped with years of use.

Danny set down his backpack on the floor and stalked over to the shower curtain. Pulling it back revealed a small standing shower. Danny twisted and pulled at the knobs until a thin stream of water cascaded out of the shower head. Then he flushed the toilet. After checking out the kitchen, content that the apartment was in working order, if not clean and sanitary, he shut the door and set the lock.

"Awesome," he whispered. It wasn't much, but for a lost soul, it was home.

—1—1—

—Sam—

Amity Park Wholesale Foods was a large grocery store, complete with a child play area near the fresh baked foods section. It also boasted the largest organic and foreign foods section in an eight-county area, which was what usually brought Sam Manson to the store. Today was something a bit different.

She stared down at the small device in her hands as she stood between tall stacks of canned peas and canned corn, watching the screen for the flickering green light. It blipped in and out of view like some sort of old-fashioned radar and she slapped her hand against the side of the phone-shaped thing. "Work, damnit." The light vanished and the screen went dark. "Tucker, you said you'd fixed this," she whined darkly to herself.

Biting back a few curses, Sam stuffed the device into her backpack and looked around with a glare. The store was busy on this summer weekend, families of all shapes and sizes wandering up and down the aisles. One rather large man was eyeing her. He blinked when she caught his gaze. Apparently put off by her unhappy scowl and dark makeup, he hurriedly grabbed a can of corn before trying to lose himself in the crowds. Sam arched an amused eyebrow.

The chatter of the store droned around her as she stuffed her hands into the pockets of her jeans and started to pace through the store. With the precision ghost detector offline again, she was back to ghost hunting the old fashioned way. Up and down each aisle, searching for the typical signs that a ghost was present: a chill in the air, the wary look in people's eyes, the little hairs standing up on the back of her neck. It wasn't something most people would notice consciously. But if you knew what to look for…

And Sam Manson knew what to look for.

Sam paused near the meat section of the store, the cold storage bins dropping the temperature a few degrees. She crossed her arms over her chest and leaned against a display of bacon, carefully studying the crowds, attempting to keep the disgusted sneer off her face at the sight of all the meat. A mother picked up a fussy child, still eyeing the price of hamburger. A father grabbed his son's hand, then hoisted the boy into his arms to point out something in the display. A family near the chicken unhooked their infant from a stroller, holding him close despite the fact that the child was still sleeping, not pausing in their shopping.

Unconscious wariness. It flickered around them in an almost visible mass.

And then there was a sound. A whisper of a whistle, too high to really hear. It almost wasn't a sound at all. She tipped her head to the side, trying to hear better.

Forehead creasing slightly, Sam felt the pulse in her ears pick up its pace. Louder. Faster. Her eyes slipped half-closed, attempting to see the ghost she knew had to be there. Little motes of green light danced in front of her eyes and she stuffed her hands into her pockets. "Where are…"

Someone screamed, the sound transforming into a horrified wail half-way through.

Sam jolted away from bacon, her hand already flying to the small weapon she had in the water-bottle holder of her backpack. It was cold as she wrapped her fingers around the handle and thumbed the switch to 'on'. The battery buzzed slightly. Pushing herself through the standing onlookers, Sam stumbled past the sliced up bits of animal packaged away in thin plastic wrappers.

"Someone call 9-1-1," came a shout.

She stopped at the edge of the crowd, her gun pointed slightly down and to the side, the purple paint on her fingernails fighting to hide the flickering green light shimmering underneath. A sobbing woman lay on the ground near a young boy, a pool of blood growing swiftly around him. Red leaked from his mouth, nose, and ears, and his eyes seemed to be nothing but empty sockets. The top of his head looked off and - after a moment of study - Sam realized this was due to the back of his head being missing. Little swirls of green mist rose from his limp form. Someone else was crouched over them, patting both the woman and her dead son, his voice lost under the volume her sobs.

Swallowing harshly, Sam tore her gaze away from the broken body, looking around for the ghost that had caused this. Heart pounding loudly in her ears and her hands starting to tremble, Sam forced herself to take a deep breath and hold it, closing her eyes, desperately searching for a calm within herself. She needed to find this ghost - not panic.

The smell of roses. The feel of cold soil between her fingers. The warm pride of an exotic orchid blossoming under her care. The crunch of crisp fruit fresh after a harvest.

Her body relaxed. Her shoulders dropped slightly as the tension flowed out through her feet. As she let her breath out and slowly took in a second, the sounds seemed to fade away. "Focus," she breathed.

There, just to her right. A sort of pressure against her nerves. A coldness that shouldn't exist. Her eyes snapped open, gazing straight through the deli counter into the butcher shop behind. Green eyes peered back.

"Found you," she whispered, her mouth curling up into a tiny smile. She could feel the adrenaline pumping through her body as she slipped past the front of the crowd, her eyes fixed on the ghost. The gun was now warm in her hands, the faint buzzing of the battery causing shivers in her spine. She shifted towards the balls of her feet and took the last few steps at a run. It took less than a moment to line up the sights, to press the trigger halfway until the gun whined in protest.

The form of the ghost came into view. An old woman, peering through the crowd with a look of concern on her face. Sam aimed for her head.

Then someone screamed the words, "He was shot!" and chaos erupted. An elbow slammed into the back of Sam's head as the person next to her started to panic. Losing eye contact with the ghost just long enough to cast a hateful glare at the man, she flipped her head back and brought the gun back up…

But the ghost was gone. "Damn," she snarled, dropping her arms back to her side and turning around to watch the mayhem. People were screamed and pushing, several were hiding under glass display cases that offered less than no protection from a real gun. A number of people had been pushed to the ground. And still the woman sobbed, holding her dead child tightly in her arms, both of them bathed in a garish, sticky red.

Sam flicked the gun off and dropped to the ground, pulling her knees up against her chest and holding them tightly. Focusing her gaze anywhere but on the blood, Sam waited patiently for the police to arrive.

And the Fentons. The ghost had to have just set off every one of Amity Park's ghost sensors.

—1—1—

—Danny—

He wasn't sure what had made him get off the bus in this town. The town was rundown and dirty. The bus stop was littered with broken signs, spray-paint tagging, and garbage. Even the sign at the outskirts of town – 'good place to live' – had definitely seen better days. He could have gone further. Michigan was a far cry from as far away from California as he could've gotten. A far cry from as far away from California as he'd wanted to get, when he'd first gotten on the bus.

But he'd gotten off the bus. He'd stood there, looking around in curiosity, as the bus drove away in a swell of fumes. And now, hours later, Danny looked around the dirty apartment, still not quite sure why he hadn't just gotten back on the bus.

The group home he'd just left hadn't been the cleanest on the planet. Between bouts of alcoholic stupor, Mike had made his wards clean the place – or at least the places that were likely to be seen by child services when they came through. The grime had only even gotten so thick before someone went after it with a sponge.

This place, though, was a new level of dirt. There was old food still caked on the countertops. Danny questioned whether or not the mattress was actually moving, and if the tail sticking out a hole in the side was a peace offering from the cockroaches or the previous tenant's idea of lunch.

It wasn't as though Danny was a clean freak. He could be messy with the best of them. But everybody had a limit – and this place was well past what Danny could consider livable.

"Fine," he muttered finally, grabbing his key and stalking out into the hallway. Something scrabbled and vanished. A larger shadow paused to glare in his direction before vanishing and slamming a door behind it. "There's gotta be cleaning stuff around here somewhere."

Danny walked slowly down the hallway, studying the numbers on the doors of the one-floor apartment building. It used to be motel, from the looks of things, quickly converted into its present form. Sixteen rooms – eight on each side. His room fell right in the middle. The rooms all had numbers and doors in various states of repair.

And there, near the end by the dirty window, a room with no sign at all on the door. There had been one, at some point, due to the darker rectangle amidst the lighter color wood. Just big enough to have said 'maintenance', or 'employees only'. Danny grabbed the handle and jostled it. Locked. "Great."

He glanced up and down the hallway. Then up around the ceiling. There were no signs of life, no signs of cameras. In a place like this, he really hadn't expected cameras – but it was better to check.

Leaning with his back against the door, hand on the knob, Danny half-closed his eyes and let out a slow breath. A cool, free-floating feeling started to curl up from his stomach and race down his arms. It tingled and made the hairs on his arms stand up. Then the feeling lurched towards his neck and up to his head and Danny – as usual – closed his eyes and gritted his teeth against the feeling.

The door seemed to vanish. With a quick step backwards, Danny was through the door. By the time he'd opened his eyes, the feeling was gone, washed away, lingering in the center of his teeth and the tips of his fingers.

The solid door was now in front of him, still closed and locked. He grinned, just a bit, as he reached for the light switch. "What do we have…" he murmured, turning around to eye the nearly empty shelves. After a few minutes of searching, he had an armful of cleaning supplies and several sponges.

Flicking the light back off, Danny leaned against the door and sighed, closing his eyes and calling up that feeling again. It made his toes curl. By the time he was back through the door and on the hallway side, the nerves in his teeth were jangling. Using his tongue to push and pull on his teeth – not that it helped much – Danny went back to his apartment.

Kicking the door closed, dumped the armload of cleaners onto the bed. "Lets do this."

The apartment never knew what hit it.

—1—1—

**To be continued.**


	2. Chapter 2

**I am sorry this took so long. If you'd like to hear the sordid details, check out my deviantart journal.**

**Otherwise, just know I do plan on keeping this updated like I'm supposed to. :)  
**

**Thousands of thanks to my reviewers! Paradise-Whispers, shadd999, AnneriaWings, Leonardo DiCaprio, Winged Element, Jae B, MyAibou, Kung-fu Blaziken, Minilopsided, SapphireSecret, Winter Coma, Anne Camp aka Obi-quiet, MsFrizzle, Codiak, MahoganyShadow, AJ, KTrevo, DannySamLover20, MysteryTrek, Arette, and Invader Johnny!**

**-Cori**

—2—2—

**White Noise**  
Chapter 2

-Sunday, August 18, 2013-

—2—2—

—Sam—

She tapped her heels against the legs of the old style row of bench seats. Her shoe connecting solidly with the thin metal legs made reassuring dings of noise that were barely audible over the sounds of the people rushing past. The Convention Center was far from her favorite place to be. Too many people.

They were slouching past, several coming out of a room across the hall with a taped-on, hand-written sign proclaiming a 'conference' lasted until 4:00 - please stay out. Dressed in jeans, cargo pants, and slouchy jackets, the people leaving the conference looked like normal people ready to head home after a long day of work. Sam watched as she played a game on her phone, knowing all too well what the 'conference' was really for.

She counted in her head as they wandered past and towards the outside. When she got to fourteen, the door to the conference room clicked closed with a final-sounding snap. With a glance down the hallway, she got to her feet and snuck inside.

A young woman was sitting in a chair in the front of the room, scribbling words on a notepad. Her long, red hair was tucked back behind her ears. At the sound of the door opening, she looked up. "Oh, hey Sam." There was a half-smile on her face, surrounded by stress lines.

"I don't get why you do this," Sam muttered, walking over and settling into one of the other chairs. The rest of the chairs in the room had been formed into a circle. "You're not even being paid."

"I'm getting paid," the young woman shot back, "in experience. You can't imagine how much I'm learning from-"

Sam waved her hand. "Yeah, yeah, Jazz. But isn't your professor the licensed therapist that's supposed to be running these meetings?" Sam could see the muscle over Jazz's left eye twitch.

Jazz ran a hand through her hair, carefully closing her notebook. There was a long, empty pause. "What do you want, Sam?"

"Your mom called. Some supper thing. I'm supposed to drag you home, kicking and screaming, if I need to."

Jazz let out a breath. "Sam, I can't-"

"Come on." Sam got to her feet, starting to collect Jazz's many bags and belongings. "You need a night off from all this studying, anyways." There was a sound, but Sam held up a finger, not even looking in Jazz's direction. "No buts."

"Yes, mother," Jazz drawled sarcastically. "I'll just ignore the paper due tomorrow-"

"Which you've no doubt already written, edited twice, and lost sleep over already," Sam finished, holding out her hand for the notebook still held in Jazz's lap. "You're in college. You should be enjoying life."

"Says the high school-er." But Jazz handed over the notebook and grabbed her jacket from the back of the chair.

"Soon-to-be high school senior with a near-perfect G.P.A," Sam shot back. Stuffing the notebook into Jazz's backpack, Sam started to haul the collection of junk towards the door. "Besides, what kind of example are you setting for me and Tucker with all this studying and summer classes?"

Jazz arched an eyebrow, grabbing a few of the bags from Sam's grasp. "A good one."

Sam shook her head with a grin. "Come on. Let's ditch this popsicle stand." She kicked the door open with a toe and headed down the hallway, barely waiting for Jazz to turn, take down the sign taped to the door, and lock the door behind her. The gentle buzz of people's conversations curled around her as she joined into the flood of people headed towards the front doors. "The less time spent in this building the better."

"What's the reason this time?" Jazz asked distractedly, catching up to her with a few quick steps and a soft apology to someone she'd bumped into.

"A massive ghost infestation isn't enough?" Sam shot her a dark look. "If not, let's add in the horrific overuse of our ground water, a recycling program that is right out of the sixties - and that's not a compliment to the sixties and their _nonexistent_ recycling program - and that the heating and cooling system that belches so many pollutants into the air that it's changed the migration pattern of at least one species of bird. Is that enough?"

The sardonic smile Jazz sent her was a chilling copy of the one that used to grace her brother's face. Sam felt her heart clench and she looked away, swallowing heavily and quietly berating herself for it. "Sam, are you okay?"

Sam's fingers curled around the bags she was hoisting. "Yeah, I'm fine." She sent a quick smile in Jazz's direction. "Why wouldn't I be?"

"Well," Jazz said softly, her voice barely audible over the crowd around them. "You did just watch a little kid die yesterday."

"No, a kid died yesterday. I wasn't watching."

"Really?"

Sam's eyes narrowed and she picked up the pace, dodging around a rather fat old man walking slowly down the hallway. "Yes, really. Drop it."

"Alright," Jazz said agreeably. Sam felt the muscles in her shoulders tense as Jazz caught up to her, knowing that the young woman didn't drop things so easily. "So," Jazz wondered, "perhaps it's because of a certain anniversary that's coming up in a few days?"

Sam spun around, temper flaring. "Jazz, I-"

"Begone!" A sudden scream flew down the hallway, making the crowd come to a collective halt. "Foul creature!"

Sam hesitated, glancing in the direction the yell had come from. "What was that?" she asked. Her voice sounded loud in the sudden silence of the crowd. Her forehead wrinkled as she squinted down the rows of lights, standing on her toes to try to see over a few heads. "Is that…?"

"It sounded like Agent F," Jazz said. "Maybe we should go help?"

"I don't hear the ghost alarm. Maybe if we just keep walking-" Sam broke off as the wail of the ghost alarm cut through her sentence. Several short blasts of sound were interspersed by a mechanical male voice announcing that a ghost had been detected, please evacuate the area. The crowd of people started to mill around, most headed for the doors with a quickness to their footsteps.

Then there was a loud shriek from down the hallway that caused the hairs on Sam's arms to stand on end. Several people in the hallway started to run, but the majority just kept walking - albeit faster than before.

With a shake of her head, Sam muttered, "It's probably just the Box Ghost." Neither of them moved as the crowd parted around them and flowed out of the building. Within seconds, the area was empty. Sam turned to Jazz, but the young woman was already walking in the direction the noises had come. Sam stood still for a moment, then scowled and followed. There was a tingling in the back of her head, chills running up and down her arms. Something with claws started pacing around in her stomach. She could almost hear a high-pitched, keening whine in the air. Shaking her head firmly, she grumbled a dark, "Fine. Let's go after the ghost."

Jazz unlocked the conference room door and stuffed her bags back inside, pausing just long enough to pull out two space-age weapons. "Here." She handed one over to Sam, stole the bags Sam had been carrying, and locked the door to the conference room. "It won't take long, I'm sure."

Sam ran her hand over the cool metal of the gun. The Fentonworks logo was painted onto the black grip, the metal a polished aluminum. A button at the bottom of the grip caused several lights to flash orange when Sam pressed it with her thumb. "This is only half-charged," she scowled.

"I had an issue earlier today-" Jazz headed down the hallway, checking the charge on her own gun. Orange-yellow lights flashed.

Sam stared at her, trying to ignore the way her heart was starting to pound. "Two ghost attacks in one day? Aren't you lucky." There was a blank look that crossed Jazz's normally expressive face. Her blue eyes went dull for a moment. Sam blinked. "What's wrong?"

"Nothing," Jazz muttered. "Let's get this thing away from Agent F and go home."

"I can't believe you still call him Agent F," Sam said quietly. "And it's probably just some no-name ghost that the guy can take care of on his own." She let Jazz lead, unconsciously shifting to the balls of her feet and off the thick, loud heels of her boots.

A dozen doors later, it started to get cold. Within a few steps, Sam went from room temperature to seeing her breath fogging in front of her. Her fingers tightened on the grip, her finger moving almost instinctively to the button-like trigger of the gun. "Alright, it's definitely a ghost." Her voice was nearly a rasp. She could feel her heart pounding in her ears. For a split second, an image of the old woman ghost filled her head, along with the bloody body of the little boy from yesterday. One hand came up to press at her temples. She pushed the mental picture away and gritted her teeth.

Jazz shot her a glance. "You okay?"

Sam scowled at her and picked up the pace.

They came up on a bend in the hallway. Cold visibly flowed near the floor in a greenish mist, escaping from something around the corner that caused it. Sam nodded a distant response to Jazz's question and stepped forwards, pushing herself against the wall just before the corner, and held the gun to her chest. "On three?" she breathed.

At Jazz's nod, she started counting slowly and steadily and nearly silently. "One…"

Her hands were shaking. The tiny laser pointer that showed where the gun was aimed trembled on the ceiling. She forced herself to take a deep breath and let it out slowly. The shaking subsided.

"Two…"

The thing in her stomach suddenly tightened its grip, making Sam catch her breath and close her eyes. Green sparkles danced in front of her vision. For a moment she wavered, feeling the claws rack against her ribs. Then her world centered and she pushed back. Her eyes opened again, the green sparkles gone. Pure will power made her set her teeth. Her fingers tightened on the gun.

"THREE!"

They scrambled around the corner, both guns raised. Green mist rolled down the hallway. Several of the lights had burst in the cold, most of the rest were flickering unsteadily.

There, in the middle of the hallway, were two forms. One was Agent F, lying on his back with his white clothes torn and dirty. His ever-present gun was nowhere to be seen. The other was a young woman in almost no clothing, her blue hair a blaze around her head. She was crouched over the young government agent, her chest pressed against his, her lips sucking at his. Her body translucent, one of her hands dug into the agent's chest.

"Ember," Sam whispered, taking an instinctive step backwards. The earplugs she always carried were in her bag – back in the conference room. "Crap."

"Don't miss," Jazz breathed. The laser light from Jazz's gun danced across Ember's head.

Sam centered her gun too, feeling a moment of pure terror just as she squeezed the trigger. Power surged up from the battery, traced through the barrel of the gun in a wave of visibly green light, and then arced through the air like lightning. Twin bolts of power slammed into the ghost's head.

The scream of pain from the ghost drove straight through Sam's brain. Her eyes closed against the sharp spear of agony, her hands coming up to claw at her ears. Sam found herself screaming too, falling into a crouch, her head by her knees.

Then.

"You." It echoed through the hallway.

Sam's heart clenched at the voice. Peeling her eyes open and her hands away from her ears, Sam sat up and glared. Her fingers scrabbled around for her gun.

The ghost was crouched against a wall, the fiery hair a subdued crackle. Her bikini-like shirt was riding low, exposing a bit too much of the colorless skin. Green eyes glowed like embers. Sharp teeth glittered behind gray lips pulled back in a snarl. "Say my name," she hissed.

On the floor, the nearly unconscious government agent writhed, his spine bending as he arched off the ground. A soft, broken, "Ember," escaped his lips.

"You can't have him," Sam snapped. She raised her chin, her fingers finding the grip of the gun and pulling it into her lap. "Humans are off limits."

The ghost moved with inhuman fluidity. One moment she was crouched against the wall, the next she was close. Too close. Sam could see the edges of her skin, the way her body simply faded into nothingness instead of have an edge like proper skin. There were swirls of light in Ember's eyes, dancing and moving to a pattern no human could follow. "Is that so, flower girl?" The sound of the girl's voice danced through Sam's ears, swirled against her brain cells, releasing all sorts of happy hormones. Sam could feel her fingers relaxing. Her body starting to lose its fight against gravity. "You're better than these humans. Let go…" Cold whispered against her cheek, almost like a breath. "Say my name…"

It took most of Sam's will power to move her arm. Fingers tightened on the grip of the gun. Slammed the end of the barrel into the ghost's chin.

…through the ghost's chin, actually, and part-way into her head. Sam could see it through the girl's skin. "This is gonna hurt," Sam hissed.

Ember's eyes widened, her body jerking out of the way of the blast. It caught her just on the side of the head, disrupting her face. One eye twisted upwards, her ear vanished into a mist. She snarled. "I'll-"

Another blast slammed into the ghost's chest, knocking her through the wall of the hallway. Sam glanced over her shoulder, spotting Jazz standing with the gun still sizzling and pointed in the ghost's direction. "Thanks," Sam breathed, getting to her feet.

"You okay?" Jazz asked softly, keeping her gun pointed towards the hallway wall.

Sam made a noncommittal noise and crept towards the still form of Agent F. As she got closer, she could see his eyes were blank but blinking, his chest moving in ragged breaths. His clothes were disheveled and the jacket pried most of the way open. "Frank? You okay?" Her eyes flickered around the hallway. Cold still seeped into her body. Green fog swirled.

There was a quiet noise. Almost a grunt.

Sam nodded, taking that as an answer. "Just hang on, okay? She's creepy, but harmless once you can get her to shut up."

The noise again.

The cold settled back on its heels and then slammed into her full-force. Sam gasped and choked, her lungs twitching at the sudden temperature change. "JAZZ!" she managed to scream just as the enraged ghost swirled out of nowhere.

Jazz twisted, following the faint swirl of blue flame with her gun. Claws appeared, swiping through the air, inches from Jazz's red hair.

"SAY MY NAME!" came the shriek, from everywhere and nowhere at once. It echoed and curled, almost beyond words.

It sliced through Sam's brain and touched something primeval. The words formed on Sam's lips and flowed out of her mouth without any sort of will power. "Ember…"

The government agent on the floor screamed again, this time the name of the ghost pouring from him. Even Jazz, her eyes slitted and tracking the faint form of the spirit, moved her lips.

Blue fire flared. The ghost was back, eyes wild, her clothing nearly gone from the power of the gun blasts. Bits of flesh Sam had no desire to see where visible. Ember mouth opened to scream.

Sam covered her ears, already knowing it wasn't going to help. Several of the classmates who had fallen for Ember's trick the first time she'd come to town were still in a coma from her screeching. Her eyes squeezed shut, her heart pounded loud in her ears.

"Stop."

Sam heard it through her hands. It was something quiet and powerful, a light baritone. Her eyes flew open, her gaze instantly coming up to find the ghost.

Only now, there were two. Ember was there, but another was standing behind her, a hand over her mouth. Two sets of green eyes glowed from nearly transparent faces. The new one was a he-ghost with blazing white hair and a strange scar running across his forehead and down near one of his eyes. "Enough of this," he muttered.

Ember spun away. "Who the Hell are you?" she spat. The flames of her hair were starting to die away, curling around her like a protective coat.

"I'm new in town," he said with a slight grin. Almost as suddenly as the grin appeared, it vanished, replaced with something nearer to a snarl. "And you're officially in my home."

"This place is _mine_-"

"Was," the ghost corrected. "Mine now. Building, mine. Humans, mine." He took a step towards the ghost. "Scat."

What was left of Ember's face screwed up into a furious mask. "MINE!" she howled, setting Sam's hair on end. The ghost coiled into a ball, then flung herself through the air at the new arrival. The air burned cold with flames.

The male ghost didn't move. He just watched, one hand outstretched, as Ember flew closer.

There was a flash of power. Green light that blazed everywhere.

Silence. It was broken only by wandering echoes of Embers screams and the beating of Sam's own heart in her ears. Sam still perfectly still, watching as the ghost's head tracked something she couldn't see. She just waited until finally he blinked and looked back at her. He wasn't much older than Sam, that much was obvious. His clothes looked to be black rags that were far too big, hanging off his arms and shoulders. His wide eyes gave him a child-like, innocent appearance. But his eyes shone with power.

Sam licked her lips. With how easily he'd made Ember run off – even after she'd taken a few blasts from their guns – this ghost was no slouch. Her hands shook as she grasped the handle of her gun with both hands and slowly brought it up to center on the ghost's chest. The little red laser light wouldn't hold still.

Then he was gone.

Just like that, he was gone. The cold started to seep away, the green fog dissolving into nothingness. Sam breathed in and out, in and out, before her arms slowly dropped down to hang at her sides.

"What the Hell?" Jazz whispered.

"Maybe we're scarier than we look," Sam added shakily.

Silence as they both stared at the place the ghost had been. "I'll call an ambulance for Agent F."

Sam nodded absently, noting that the young agent seemed to be unconscious. Picking a fight with Ember had been more than he could deal with on his own. She glanced down at her gun, absently pushing the button to watch the little lights flash red. Empty. "Yet another reason to hate the convention center."

—2—2—

—Danny—

Danny Fetters stood on the roof of the convention center, watching curiously as the female ghost pulled herself together. His foot tapped against the roof. Or, to be more realistic, tapped against nothing what-so-ever. The roof didn't really exist. Not to him. It was just a blurry smear of blackish nothing.

The girl was something he'd never seen before. Ghosts he was used to dealing with; there had been no shortage of them in California. But he'd never met one with as much power as this. Not only had the humans been able to see her, they'd been able to _interact_ with her. Fight her with those strange weapons.

Danny clicked his teeth, making a mental note to find out more about those guns, before turning his full attention back on the ghost. She seemed to be sobbing, curled up in a ball on the roof, looking for all intents and purposes like a whipped puppy. Her 'skin' was burned and scarred and looked to be partially melted, making one eye significantly lower than the other. Streaks of black tarred her face like a bad make-up job, but Danny had the feeling it was probably a result of the burning. Blue flames licked at her constantly, pouring from her hair like a waterfall.

Curiosity had Danny taking a step forwards.

Her head jerked up, piercing him with glowing eyes. "You." Her voice was fierce. There were no tears staining her cheeks. The sobbing was gone instantly, replaced with unadulterated fury.

"It's my town," he repeated, raising his chin, crossing his arms, and arching an eyebrow. "You get to leave."

Eyes swept him from head to toe as the girl untangled herself and rose to her feet. In one sweeping step, she was pressed up against him. Her body cold as ice and solid as crystal. There was none of the normal fleshy softness as her chest bumped his. Just as suddenly as the anger had appeared, it was gone again. Replaced by something sultry. "What kind of ghost are you?" she whispered.

Her mouth was inches from his. From this close, Danny could see that her eyelashes had been burned off. Little curls of blue flame dug at him, frozen so cold that it made him shudder. "Back off," he said.

"And what if I don't want to?" Her voice was silky. Little waves of green mist curled from her mouth as she spoke, caressing the skin of his face and causing bubbles in his brain. Burned fingers tugged at his hair - not enough to be painful, but enough to pull his head back and reveal more of his throat. The smile that slid onto her face was eerily beautiful, despite the melted skin and destroyed features. "My name is Ember. Ember McLain."

Feeling his mouth move to form her name, feeling his brain short-circuit and his body start to respond to her advances, Danny jerked backwards in a flash of panic. A hand came up between them. Energy sizzled along his nerves and burst into life between them, forcing the girl backwards. "I said back off," he rasped. He swallowed heavily and tried to ignore the sudden ache that had developed in his chest.

Her smile grew. Teeth flashed at him. "I'd rather not," she whispered. Ember took a step forwards. Then another.

Danny took a step back. Something deep inside was responding to the prowling female stalking towards him, responding to the energy she was pouring into the sky, responding to a sort of emptiness inside of him that longed to be filled. He stumbled back another step, feeling his throat close up. His mouth opened. Then shut.

"I think you're going to be mine."

Pulling together the ragged remains of his brain, Danny dug in his heel and straightened his spine. "No," he said, although his mouth felt like it were full of cotton balls. "You're going to leave now."

The ghost didn't seem to hear him. She took a few more steps, her green eyes glowing fiercely. "Mine forever," she breathed.

A dark thing inside of Danny's body whole-heartedly agreed with the sentiment.

Pulling energy out of the air, Danny gritted his teeth. It tingled and coursed through him in a pain that bordered on pleasure. Bubbling and coiling inside of him, Danny pointed at Ember and sent the energy out of him with something even less than a thought. The greenish bolt formed in the air and speared towards the ghost. Through her.

Her scream nearly drove Danny to his knees. His eyes watered and he clung at consciousness.

The silence that followed made his ears ring. He stared at Ember. She was glaring back at him, a large hole in her chest, her eyes murderous. Energy leeched from her as a visible liquid that pooled at her feet.

"Get out of my town," Danny said, his ears still ringing, raising a hand to point at her again.

The pool of glowing green liquid began to evaporate, filling the air with a caustic mist. One of her burned hands came to press at her stomach. The cold liquid still seeping from her stuck to her fingers like honey. She didn't lose eye contact. Her body was trembling.

Then she was gone. Danny followed the gentle push of her presence with his eyes until she was out of his range. Very slowly, he sank to the ground and buried his head in his hands. His brain felt like mush. His body was shaking.

After long moments of silence, he pushed himself to his feet and then into the sky. It took no more than a few seconds for him to be back at his apartment, standing near the bed. He closed his eyes, trying to relax as he felt around inside of his mind for a heavy, warm feeling. Energy built up around his heart, gripping it painfully. It built and built until Danny was biting back a scream.

Then the pain cascaded over, searing as his human form wrapped around him. His heart beat loudly in his ears. Sweat almost instantly broke out on his body as every muscle screamed in protest. Danny raised a hand to swipe across his face and up through his messy hair.

Collapsing on the bed, Danny curled up in a little ball. It took only a few moments for the bone-deep ache to force him to reach for his backpack. He dug through it, finally digging out a little white pill. Pushing himself so that he was lying on his back, he stared at the pill for the longest time before popping it into his mouth.

It didn't take long before he fell asleep.

**To be continued.**


	3. Chapter 3

_***I am doing an Author's Notes version, filled with spoilers and explanations, on my deviantart site. Check it out if interested. First couple chapters are going up tonight!***_

_**.**_

**Just started my new job. Anxiety of this has lead me to insanity. Well, insomnia. The lack of sleep is bringing about the craziness. I have also finished knitting a sweater in record time - just over a month. And I've now watched every episode of 'American Greed' available on Hulu. And I'm a good portion of the way through Stargate. And Atlantis.**

**...rather than writing. :) I'll try to be better with updates.  
**

**Thousands of thanks to my reviewers! Winged Element, Jae B, Wilona Riva, WolfsTrinity-TSO, MsFrizzle, MysteryTrek, DannySamLover20, Invader Johnny, Guest, and KTrevo! You rock.  
**

**There are NO ghost OCs in this story (with the exception of a squirrel... more on that later), and incredibly few human OCs. Can you start to figure out who is who? Have you figured out who-dun-it?  
**

**-Cori**

—3—3—

**White Noise**  
Chapter 3

-Monday, August 19, 2013-

—3—3—

—Danny—

He brushed his hands down the front of his shirt, hoping against hope that he'd gotten most of the wrinkles out of it. The last time this shirt had been laundered, he'd been living in California. It had suffered through several long bus rides and quite a bit of walking since. However, in the three days since he'd decided to settle into this strange town, he hadn't found time to wash it to free it of wrinkles.

Giving up on the shirt, he turned his attention to the area around him. The sidewalks were strewn with cracks, the roads marred with potholes that were randomly and haphazardly fixed. Bus stations and signs were in disrepair. Apparently this was the section of town regulated to a very small road repair budget. Which seemed odd, as a steady stream of cars and trucks roared past on the roads.

And then there was the convention center. Danny stopped by the main doors to crane his head upwards and study the soaring arches and large panels of glass. The August sun glinted, causing him to squint. The words, "Amity Park Convention Center" was scribbled in graffiti-like black letters across the front of the art-deco building. He'd barely stopped yesterday to study the outside of the building, before rushing inside.

He caught a wave of feeling just before someone smashed into him, causing him to backpedal. He blinked the glare out of his eyes and looked around, finally focusing on a young woman scrambling to pick up papers on the ground. "Sorry, sorry," she was mumbling. "My fault."

The long red hair struck something in Danny's memory. He gnawed on it as he bent over to pick up some of the papers for her before the breeze from the cars took them too far away. "It's okay. I wasn't watching where I was going either."

When he grabbed the last one, he looked up. Froze. It was one of them – from yesterday. She looked decidedly different without a scowl and a gun. She smiled at him, reaching for the papers. "Thank you." Her blue eyes sparkled in the sunshine.

"Welcome," Danny said. "What's your name?"

Pushing hair behind her ear with one hand, she stuffed the papers carefully into her bag. "Jazz. Jazz Fenton."

"I'm Danny."

She stopped, just for a second, something flickering through her eyes. Sadness. Pain. Danny blinked, tipping his head slightly as he studied her. But it was gone almost as fast, the smile on her face masking the echoes of melancholy. "Nice to meet you. I'm actually running a little late… so…"

"Don't let a stranger hold you up," Danny said, gesturing with a hand. "It's not considered a legal 'hit and run' accident if you exchange names."

The young woman laughed slightly and shook her head. "Have a nice afternoon, Danny."

Then she was gone, only the lingering whispers of her emotions staining the air around him. Danny stayed where he was, watching the cars roar past, before shaking his head and starting back up the street. He also was going to be running late rather soon.

—3—3—

—Sam—

Sam cursed under her breath as she ran through the park, a dark-skinned teenage boy hot on her heels. This was just what she needed. One of her last days of summer before school started, and there was an infestation of ghosts. In her hands, a cell-phone sized box beeped loudly, grating on her already frayed nerves. With the grocery story on Saturday, then Ember yesterday, she wasn't sure she could take anything more. She shook the little device as she ran, squashing buttons irritably. Finally, she gave up. "Make it shut up!" she snapped, throwing the small detector over her shoulder towards her friend. He missed.

"Yes, Your Majesty," Tucker shot back between pants for breath, slowing down to grab the device. Within seconds, the blaring sound was silenced. She didn't take it back. She knew what the detector said. It was just over the hill.

She crested the hill, pulling to a stop as she stared around at the trees and the people. Nothing. Nobody was running or looking scared or anything. The sun was shining, little clouds casting shadows on the ground. Birds fluttered in the trees. Sam hesitated at that - birds were generally the first creatures to notice ghosts and cleared the area. She watched them a moment, then continued her survey of the park. There was nothing out of the ordinary.

"Where is it?" Tucker asked as he stumbled to a stop beside her. He was breathing hard, his hands on his knees.

"I…" Her heart was beating in her ears. She relaxed, half-closing her eyes as she allowed her mind to clear, trying to see, trying to find, trying to hear… Nothing. "I don't know."

The boy straightened, still gasping for air, and stared at the ghost detector. "Right in front of us," he said, confused. "Like, thirty feet."

Both of them focused on the empty splotch of air. Sam ran a hand through her frizzy hair and shook her head. "There's nothing there."

"Yeah, I see that." Tucker tapped the side of the device, then ran his fingers over the buttons. "Maybe this is broken."

"Maybe it's just a really weak ghost." Sam curled her fingers around the shoulder strap of her backpack. Glancing at Tucker with an arched eyebrow, she shrugged. "Can't even manifest properly."

Tucker hummed under his breath. "I don't think so. This is supposed to be calibrated so it doesn't pick up on ghosts like that." He pulled a tiny screwdriver out of pocket in his pants and started to undo the back of the ghost detector. "Maybe…" He dropped to the grass, crossing his legs, his focus turned completely on the small device.

Sam sank to the ground, pulling her knees up to her chest, watching the warm summer morning pass by. A few boys raced by, tossing a frisbee from one to the other. She felt her heart twinge and crack. She hadn't played frisbee since… since before. Her eyes flickered towards her best friend. Tucker simply didn't enjoy frisbee - not really. It was more of a game he'd watched, rather than participated in. Not like…

"How's Frank?"

Blinking rapidly to clear a bit of blurriness from her eyes, Sam set her chin on her knees. Memories of Ember and the strange government agent slid into her mind. "The Fentons said he'd be fine. Just took a nasty burn to his chest," she muttered.

The quiet sounds of tinkering stopped. "You?"

Sam's eyes fixed on Tucker's. They were a deep hazel-green behind his glasses. "Me what?" she asked.

"Well, that's one dead kid and a guy we don't hate in the hospital in forty-eight hours-"

"Jazz has already done this," Sam interrupted. "I don't need a therapy session."

One of Tucker's eyebrows went up, but his attention went back to the device in his hands. Its inners were displayed for the world to see, the sunshine glinting off the bits of solder. He fiddled for a moment, his forehead wrinkling in concentration. "I was thinking," he said slowly, "of taking the next few shifts. So you can have a couple days off."

Sam felt her back stiffen. Her teeth ground together. "I'm fine," she said sharply. Little green sparks curled around her fingers. "Just because I'm female-"

"I'm not saying anything about that," Tucker cut in. He looked up at her. "When I sprained my wrist two weeks ago, you insisted on taking over the patrols. I haven't gone on one since and, trust me, my wrist is fine." He waved his arm around as if to demonstrate. "Just because you're not physically hurt…" He trailed off, shaking his head. "Look. If I'd seen what you did, I'd want a few days off. It's not a strength thing. It's not a mental thing. It's not that I think you need therapy, 'cause you don't. I just… I think… a few days off might do you good, considering."

She looked away. A butterfly fluttered through the sky. Down the hill, just in the corner of her vision, she watched a little girl in a blue dress walk around in circles. "I'm fine," she repeated, although some of the venom was gone from her voice.

"So we didn't just chase across the entire park because of a malfunctioning ghost detector," Tucker drawled. "You're not on edge at all."

Sam was in the middle of opening her mouth to retort when her attention focused fully on the girl in the blue dress down the hill. The girl was continuing to circle, 'round and 'round and 'round. There wasn't a smile on the girl's face - she wasn't playing. Her face was white and blank. "What's she doing?" Sam whispered as the girl started to stumble.

"Who?"

"The little girl." Sam pointed.

Tucker's eyes narrowed as he caught sight of the strange behavior. "Does she look possessed to you?" Then Tucker let out a startled breath. "And that might be why we detected a ghost but couldn't see it."

Sam hummed and got to her feet, starting down the hill. Her shoes trampled through the grass as she ran over the different ways to de-possess someone. The Fentons hadn't found any nice ways to do it - most involved quite a bit of pain on the host's part. Sam did have another way, but there were far too many witnesses for it to be an option. "Hey," she called out the little girl as she got to within a few feet.

The girl was making a strange keening noise. It seemed to resonate out of her nose and fill the air around them. The circles had drawn tighter until she was standing in one place, simply turning on her heel. Her blue dress danced around her knees, the white lace dirty from playing in the park. A necklace - a gold chain with an amber pendant - graced her neck. This close, Sam could see the girl's eyes were glazed and empty.

"Hey." Sam reached out and touched the girl's shoulder. "You in there?"

The girl collapsed into a limp pile on the ground.

Sam flinched backwards, startled. The girl's eyes rolled up in her head, her mouth opening and shutting like a fish out of water. Little flickers of green danced in the whites of her eyes. "Tucker!" Sam dropped to her knees beside the girl, her fingers hovering just over the white skin without actually touching.

"I got it." There was the sound of a phone dialing. Hopefully the emergency services.

Breathing out slow and steady, Sam narrowed her focus onto her fingers. They prickled, like she was trying to grab onto a thorny rose bush. Something cold encircled her lungs and squeezed, sending the last of her slow breath out in a rush. In the emptiness between one breath and the next, her eyes slid closed, her attention drifted from her fingers to just past her fingertips.

There. It was a cold pulse of energy inside the girl. It flickered wildly, like a heartbeat of a person after a race, dancing against her senses. The energy seemed to sense her. It paused and pulled back, watching her. Then it was gone.

Air rushed into her lungs as Sam's eyes snapped back open, her fingers dropping down to touch the girl's cold cheek. Mere moments had passed. Tucker's phone was still ringing. Sam swallowed heavily, catching flickers of green dancing on her fingernails, chipping away the carefully applied purple fingernail polish.

Someone picked up the phone on the other end. Tucker was talking, explaining where they were, what had happened. Sam's fingers brushed over the cold skin to settle on the side of the girl's neck. Found an artery. Pressed down. Nothing. Not even the faintest flutter.

"She's been dead for awhile," Sam said. Her voice sounded distant even to her. Perhaps her ears were plugged. "It was the ghost, walking her around."

Tucker was too busy talking on the phone to answer.

"That's three bad attacks," Sam whispered. "In three days." Her fingers settled onto her thighs and curled into fists in her skirt. Pulling her eyes away from the girl's corpse, Sam looked up at the sky. It was still blue. Clouds floated white and pretty overhead. Birds fluttered in a tree nearby. People had noticed the girl collapse and were starting to congregate. One adult pushed through the crowd and took over the scene, starting to give the girl CPR. Sam knew it wouldn't do anything. There was nothing left to save. "What's going on?"

Someone pulled her to her feet. It was Tucker. "You okay?" he asked. Sam's ears still felt plugged. His voice came from a mile away.

That's when she noticed. The white-faced girl. Blue dress, dirty white lace.

No necklace.

"Bingo," she whispered.

—3—3—

—Danny—

"I don't hire high school students."

"I know, ma'am." Danny sat in the chair opposite the manager of the grocery store four blocks from his new apartment. The office was freezing cold and the chair was too small, making his knees higher than his hips, and causing him to look upwards to look into her eyes as she leaned over her desk. There was nothing nice or friendly about the woman, aside from the soft waves of her hair. She had a super-model body, boosted by the sharp jacket she wore cinched tight at the waist and the low-cut shirt that showed just a tad too much skin to be professional. The name tag on the desk read 'Penelope Walters'. From the look in her eyes, she was a solid 'Ms. Walters' and nothing else.

Danny knew about a dozen guys that would be tripping over each other to work for this woman. She was gorgeous. But there was something off about the beautiful Ms. Walters that Danny couldn't put his finger on. The nameless something made the hair stand on the back of his neck.

"And you are seventeen."

It was the eighth not-a-question that she asked that was really a question. "Yes, ma'am, but I really need the job." Danny leaned forwards. "I'm not just any high school kid-"

The phone rang. Without even a glance towards Danny, she cut her arm to the side and picked up the phone. "Yes?" There was a bout of silence, followed by the stern look on her face freezing into something even worse. "I see." More silence. "No. Just leave it. I'll be right down." Gray eyes turned to Danny. "There is an issue that needs to be dealt with. You can find your own way out of the building."

She got to her feet and strode towards the door, but Danny was already busy following. "Please, Ms. Walters, can you just give me a chance?"

Her heels click-clicked on the hallway tile, her body moving quickly and purposefully down the hallway. It almost seemed to be more of a stalk than a walk, although her hips still managed to sway to a perfect hypnotic beat. "I told you I don't hire high school students."

Danny caught up enough to see the edge of her face as she talked. "How about a trial period? I really need a job." Lips tightened. Wrinkles formed around her eyes. Danny knew he was pushing her patience, but he had to try. "Please."

They reached the end of the hallway and she burst through the door, letting it bang open against the wall. Danny followed, finding themselves in some sort of back storeroom. There were things all over the floor. It didn't take Danny long to realize they were peanuts. Thousands upon thousands upon thousands of peanuts.

"I want an explanation. Now." Ms. Walters' voice was commanding in the silence that had fallen when the door had loudly banged open. There was an electric feel to the air.

The employees looked at each other. Then at the floor. Then at the forklift that seemed to be in the middle of the mess. More than one set of eyes focused on Danny, keeping himself slightly behind the irate grocery manager.

"Now." There was a furious note to the boss's voice.

"The box disappeared," one of the men finally said. "It was on the forklift, and we were moving it… and then there was no box."

Silence. Ms. Walters foot tapped loudly on the floor. "You want me to believe," she said, "that the box just vanished?"

"It was one of those ghosts," another worker – a young woman – added. "The one that steals boxes?"

Danny arched an eyebrow at this information. Ghosts? A box-stealing ghost?

"Yes, we're blaming our incompetence on ghosts." Ms. Walters sighed, rubbing at her temples with red-polished fingernails. "Such a day…" One hand pointed elegantly towards the peanuts. "Clean them up. Get them in a box so we can donate it to the food shelf or something." Her voice dropped to a not-too-quiet-mutter. "Of all the idiots in the world, I have to hire the creative ones. 'Ghosts did it'." She spun on her heel, starting to take a step. Then her eyes fell on Danny. "You're still here."

Danny's eyes shot from the peanuts to the manager. "Yes, ma'am, but just please hear me out."

"I don't hire high school students." She headed towards the door.

"If I don't get a job, I'm homeless." Danny followed, catching the door and trailing her back to her office. "I have ninety-three dollars to my name and no family. No friends. No resources." She didn't pause. "I got kicked out of the group home when I turned seventeen. I have to live on my own and I have to have a job. I don't have anywhere else to go!"

She grabbed the doorknob to her office, but didn't turn it. Just stood still for a second, apparently contemplating the style of the letters forming her name.

"Yes, I'm a high school student. I'm gonna graduate this year and I'm gonna go to college and I'm gonna have a better life than the kids I was living with." Danny crossed his arms over his chest and drummed his fingers on his arm. "I'm not here looking for experience, or fun money, or my parents' expectations. I don't have a choice and I'm gonna have a job and I need this one."

She turned to look at him. Her gray eyes were cold even behind the wavy brown hair. "Why this one?"

"I'm good at stacking things." Danny let a small smile flit onto his face. "I'm going to have to go to school during the day. I'll need to work evenings and nights – the shifts you need filled to stack things on shelves. It'll be quiet. Steady. Not around a lot of people."

"I don't hire high school students."

"How about if we change it 'pre-college student'?" Danny tried for a grin, but it faltered at the hard look that still crossed the boss's face.

"What would you do if a ghost were stealing a box and spilling hundreds of dollars worth of peanuts onto the floor?" Her arms crossed on her chest.

Danny paused, blinked, then shrugged. "I've never spilled a box of anything. I don't plan on starting now, no matter what the cause."

Her eyes narrowed. The gray seemed to darken. Then she let a sound out of her nose. "Trial period. Two weeks. $4.70 an hour."

"Minimum wage is-" Danny started.

"Training hours are different," she interrupted. "Take it or leave it."

Danny nodded instantly, feeling his heart soar at the idea of having some sort of paying job lined up already. He'd been fully set on having to stalk ten different grocery stores before one would accept him. "I take it." He held out a hand to shake.

The manager – his new boss – eyed it dubiously. Without removing her arms from crossed over her ample chest, her eyes drifted back up to his. "See the office manager to fill out your paperwork and get a schedule set up." She twirled and opened up the door to her office. A swirl of cold air leaked into the hallway.

"When do I get to start?" Danny asked with a bright smile.

"Did you see all those peanuts?" the managed snapped, slamming the door behind her.

Danny arched an eyebrow, catching her drift with a shake of his head. "Okay then. I'll just go see whats-his-name and get to work." He eyed the door to his new boss's office before working his way back down the hallway towards the front of the store. Light was barely peeking its way through the grimy window. The air conditioning was turned up to an insane level here as well. Danny rubbed the gooseflesh from his arm as he walked up to the desk.

The man sitting in the desk looked up. He was stubby and round, with short-cut brown hair and green eyes that stared blankly from behind thick pop-bottle glasses. "What do you want?"

"I just got hired. I need to fill out paperwork." Danny dug through his backpack and pulled out the stack of documents he'd brought with him from California. "And she wants me to get started working today."

"Of course she does," the man said snarkily. "She alway gets to be the boss." Almost disappearing behind the desk, the man started to dig through cabinets. He finally reappeared, wielding a clipboard and a small stack of papers. "Fill these out. I'll need a copy of some ID card."

"Thanks," Danny said, glancing over the paperwork. Some of it would be tricky to fill out. "Can I borrow this pen?"

The man wrinkled his nose. "If you must."

"I'm Danny, by the way. Danny Fetters." Danny grinned at the sour-looking man before heading towards one of the uncomfortable chairs.

"I'm Bert," the man said darkly. "Welcome to Amity Park Wholesale Foods, Inc."

**To be continued.**


	4. Chapter 4

_***I am doing an Author's Notes version, filled with spoilers and explanations, on my deviantart site. Check it out if you're interested.***_

**See? Better with updates. :) Happy?  
**

**Thousands of thanks to my reviewers! DannySamLover20, Guest, nycorrall, babydragon11, Rakahn, Invader Johnny, and ShiroHichi891! Thanks to everyone who's reading, reviews or not! :D Ya'll rock!  
**

**-Cori**

—4—4—

**White Noise**  
Chapter 4

-Tuesday, August 20, 2013-

—4—4—

—Sam—

Samantha Manson slung her purple backpack on the ground next to the door in the hospital room, ignoring the clanking sounds her stash of ghost hunting equipment made. For a long moment, she stared at the number next to the room: 248 She'd been in a lot of these hospital rooms over the past few years. Many of them had been while visiting the Fentons or Tucker. Sometimes, it had been her lying in the bed. This one, she'd never been in before.

Walking through the door, the place was a near carbon-copy of every other room in the hospital. A sterile bed with a person swaddled inside, IVs dripping, a computer monitor blinking with ever-changing numbers, and a small TV set locked onto a PBS station showing some sort of round-table talk show. The room stank of disinfectants and glowed harshly under the fluorescent lights.

"Frank?" she called softly, eyeing the person on the bed. Trapped in a hospital gown instead of the starched white suit, he seemed oddly human. His brown hair was disheveled instead of neatly slicked back, and the seemingly ever-present sunglasses were gone. He also seemed to be sleeping.

She was about to turn around and walk away when the man rolled his head her way and let his eyes flicker open. Dark blue. She'd never noticed the color of his eyes before, through the sunglasses. "Ms. Manson," he said, his voice raspy and broken, "it's Agent F, please."

Sam shrugged and continued into the room, clasping her hands behind her back as she strolled up to the side of his bed. "Whatever you say, Agent F." She laced as much sarcasm into her voice as possible. Jazz and Tucker and the adult Fentons had grown bizarrely fond of the strange government looney. Sam didn't quite understand the feeling. While she hated him much less than the rest of the government… perhaps she even liked him, now and then, in the stand-off-ish way one 'likes' a stranger fighting for the common good… he was still a government man dressed in white and swamped in secrets.

Secrets people had died because of. And he was still keeping them - she knew it, deep down in her heart.

There was a sigh and the eyes closed again. "What do you want?"

"Ember."

A twitch. Some might call it a terrified flinch, although Sam held just enough respect for this lone government wacko to hold back on the internal commentary. He had left his agency and compatriots to stay in this God-forsaken town and attempt to protect the people he'd sworn to serve, despite his orders to the contrary. Sam had to give him something for that, if nothing else.

"Why do you persist in giving them names?" the man asked.

Sam arched an eyebrow. "You really want me to call her Ghost X3564D9?"

The eyes peered back at her. There was pain locked inside them. Sam – having been at the receiving end of the treatment before – knew the bone-deep psychological ache the more powerful ghosts could give. She didn't comment on it, though.

"Giving them names gives them more power over you," he told her stiffly.

"Sweet," Sam muttered, "how's that working for you?"

Agent F let an annoyed noise out of his throat. "Can we get to the point, Ms. Manson?"

"How did you know she was in the community center?"

"I didn't." The man smoothed a wrinkle out of the bed sheets, looking, in that moment, quite a bit older than his twenty-eight years. "I was there for… other reasons."

Sam's eyes narrowed. The Fentons had been largely unable to figure out how to track the weaker ghosts and those that were just passing through, using so little energy they didn't set off anything but the most sensitive trackers. Ember – one of the few ghosts able to change her energy output drastically based on her environment – was a real bugger to track. And one of the ones that could cause the most damage once she got going. The fact that Agent F had found her before Ember set off the alarms had been interesting. It seemed, though, that it had simply been luck to find the two in the same place. Unless…

She eyed him distrustfully a moment before giving a mental sigh. She knew she wasn't going to be able to pry secrets out of the agent, and not due to a lack of trying on her part. So she changed topics. "You heard about the boy at the grocery store."

Agent F's hands went still. "Yes." He glanced up at her. "Have you found concrete evidence that it was a ghost? The news is still reporting that it was a shooting…"

Shaking her head, Sam looked away and focused on the TV. Pictures of video games were being shown, the men around the table gesturing wildly as they talked. "All the evidence was gone by the time the Fentons arrived. As far as I know, the police are calling it a homicide, rather than a ghost attack. They've even got a suspect." She was quite a moment. "How about the girl yesterday?"

"What girl?" Sam could hear the tension in his voice.

"She was possessed at the park yesterday," Sam said softly, finally looking back at the government agent, "and dead before the ghost let go of her." The man was pale and very still. "They're calling it a medical emergency. Cardiac arrest. Unfortunate happenstance."

The man's hands curled into fists, white-knuckled in the sheets. The skin around his eyes wrinkled as his eyes narrowed. "Let me guess," he said, his voice tight with anger. "No evidence of a ghost?"

Sam shook her head. "Nothing concrete. None of the sensors were picking anything up by the time the Fentons arrived."

"So it's a serial killer with an ability to disappear."

Sam winced at the bluntness of the words. "I-"

Struggling into a sitting position, his face white with pain, Agent F reached out and grabbed Sam's hand. It was warm and bony. "You need to get the Fentons to start gathering evidence. It's going to attack again, and we need to figure out the pattern."

"Nobody thinks its ghosts-" Sam tried to pull her hand out from his grasp. She wasn't fond of being touched.

"Nobody thought it was ghosts three years ago either," the man pressed, his fingers tightening around her hand. "And we got them to believe."

"The Fentons did that before…" Sam retrieved her hand, clasping them behind her.

Agent F nodded as he collapsed back against the pillows, eyes closing most of the way. "And we'll do it again," he said firmly.

Sam hummed, not sure if she quite agreed with him or not. People had started to believe them about ghosts existing, but it was a long way from believing in ghosts to believing in ghostly serial killers. She stood there, shifting her weight from foot to foot, her eyes trailing back to the TV screen. Images of Doom 3 were playing. Video games were easier to think about than potential serial killers.

"Did you want something else?"

"Yeah…" She walked over to her backpack and grabbed the small gift that had been tucked inside. It was wrapped with some of Mr. Fenton's somewhat-famous ghost wrapping paper. If it were dark enough, the paper even glowed. Sam handed it over, snorting slightly at the way the man's hair stood up slightly from the electrical charge of the paper. "Mrs. Fenton wanted me to give this to you."

Removing the wrapping as quickly as possible – and touching it as little as possible – the man dropped the slightly radioactive paper to the ground and gave it a dubious look. "If you'd just take that back to them…"

Sam nodded, grabbing it and fussing out some of the folds as the man opened the small box and inspected the contents.

"Tell them thank you," he said, picking out a piece of fudge and turning it over and over before popping it into his mouth. "Although why they insist on chocolate, I still don't understand."

"Mrs. Fenton got it from some book she was reading. Chocolate helping cure a lot of the things ghosts do to you." She reached over and plucked a small bit of chocolate from the box and chewed on it.

The government agent put the box aside, his face serious. "I should be out late tonight, perhaps tomorrow morning. With this thing on the loose, I'll stop by and we'll try to get the new radar system working-"

This time it was Sam's turn to twitch. Twitch, mind you.

Agent F frowned and tipped his head slightly to the side. His eyes narrowed.

"About the new radar system," Sam said, not able to actually look at him. "It exploded."

The man was still. "Exploded?" His voice was quiet.

"Just some of it," Sam said. "A small computer part. The control system."

"I see," he said softly, looking away. "I'll see what happened when I get there, I suppose." His shoulders had drooped. There were new wrinkles forming along his brow. "But we'll have to get it going quickly - hopefully before our ghost can strike again."

Between the Fentons and what Frank could wheedle out of the government, that new radar system had been an expensive but very promising new piece of technology. It would have nearly doubled the accuracy of their radar and increased the overall sensitivity of the tracking network by just over a quarter. The explosion had set their online date back by almost a month.

"Yeah, I suppose," Sam parroted, trying not to study the man's defeated posture too hard. Agent F was one of those few people who had real moral principles and stood up for them and refused to back down. Sam didn't always agree with his principles, but she admired his choice to stick by them come Hell or high water. It was hard to see him, looking rather broken. "It's not so bad. Just one piece, right?"

The wrinkles around his lips deepened. "Right." His voice was soft.

Sam stood there for a moment more, fiddling with the wrapping paper. It crinkled in her grasp. The sound of the TV, still on the PBS station, momentarily flooded the room. "I think I'll go, then," she said into the silence when the man seemed content to stare at the bland landscape photograph on the wall.

He nodded, more of twitch of his head that anything, still quiet.

Sam waited a beat, then turned and grabbed her backpack, nearly fleeing from the room. Hospital smells and sounds assaulted her has she slipped down the hallways, took the stairs instead of wait for the elevator, and then was out the door and onto the street. By the time she reached the safety of the sidewalk, she was nearly at a run. Her bag hit her back in a steady, rhythmic pattern as she made her way down the street towards home, her thoughts dark and stormy.

—4—4—

—Danny—

Danny sat in the park on top of the hill, watching the clouds pass by overhead. It was quite a cloudy day - there were far more clouds than open blue sky. Most people liked sunny days, with the warmth of the sun and the shining colors and vibrant smells of a summer day. Danny much preferred the clouds.

According to the news he'd listened to last night, a little girl had died in the park. Based on the pictures they'd shown of the flashing ambulance lights, Danny knew it was close to this hill. As his eyes watched a particularly gray cloud slide past, Danny felt out with his senses for the trace left over by her death.

When he'd started learning to deal with his strange talents, he'd kept stumbling over what he could only described as holes left in the world. Strange voids of nothingless that nobody could see but him, locked in place in the air. They were somehow large enough for a person to pass through and small enough that a fly couldn't fit through at the same time. They glowed brighter than the sun, yet were the darkest of blacks. They were there and not, somehow, visible only from certain directions at certain times. It made Danny's head hurt to think about them too much.

It wasn't until he'd seen someone die on one of his doctor visits that he understood what he was seeing. The holes were left in the places people died. Their souls fled this world onto the next, ripping the fabric of reality as they clawed their way to a world beyond this one. Danny had watched that day, fascinated, as the path to the afterlife formed in front of his eyes, uncaring about the broken corpse lying on the stretcher.

Since then, he'd kept looking for them. Something deep inside of him - the thing that was lightning and ice and dark instincts and everything and nothing at once - grabbed onto the idea of a doorway to beyond. Every time he found one, he would stare into its depths, trying to make out what lay past the threshold. He'd never seen anything. Perhaps, he thought, it was because he wasn't properly dead. Maybe the secrets of the dead were nothing but darkness to the living. Or, perhaps, it was simply the wrong door. He had to find the one he fit through - his doorway.

But still he searched. And still he stared. The thing inside of him knew that one day, they'd find the doorway that would lead them back through. They just had to look. And wait. And be patient.

If there was one thing the dark lightning inside of him knew, it was patience. Eternal, empty patience.

The cloud overhead moved on, casting a ray of light down onto the park. It was like a herald from God, stretching out a finger to point to a spot somewhat down the hill and to the right. Danny gazed in that direction, his eyes unfocused. And he saw it. The shimmering, blinding darkness.

His body moved as if in a trance, walking forwards until he was within arms reach of the doorway. His eyes burned from the light. This doorway was larger than most - it seemed to reach to the tops of the trees at times, only to shrink to the size of a dandelion just when Danny had properly focused on it. It twisted and misted, barely visible, as Danny struggled to look at it without actually looking at it.

There was something wrong with it. A ring of dark light was wrapped around the doorway. He'd never seen anything like it, and he'd tracked down dozens and dozens of doorways. Danny slowly reached out a hand, his eyes focused off to the side, and tapped the ring with a finger.

Red eyes flashed in the darkness as the ring bit him.

Danny yelped and pulled his hand back, staring at the twin pinpricks on his finger. Blood was welling up and dribbling down his finger. "Ow," he muttered, sticking his finger into his mouth and sucking on it momentarily. When his gaze tracked back to where the doorway was, it was no longer visible. He could still feel it - a subtle pressure and coldness - but it was hiding from him.

"That was interesting," he muttered, wandering back up the hill, then down the other side towards home. He needed to get cleaned up and head to work. "I wonder what that was."

—4—4—

—Sam—

Sam didn't go home like she'd originally planned. Her feet had taken her to the front door, only to take her past and on down the street. Somewhere along the line, she'd sent a text message to her parents informing them that she'd eat out tonight, and then she walked herself to the small park only a mile from her home.

It had a swing set and a slide and a broken teeter-totter. Sam sat in one of the swings, slowly rocking herself forwards and back, squinting into the setting sun. It was one of those evenings – one of the ones where being alone was better than being with other people. Especially if those people were going to either ignore you or criticize your every move and not understand that there were things in this world more important than social ladders and looking perfect.

Like saving people's lives. Helping keep the Earth from becoming disgustingly uninhabitable. Rescuing innocent animals from torture. Tracking down ghosts and sending them back to where they belong. Wasn't that a far more noble cause than simply being popular and rich? She was doing things. Real things.

Her backpack dropped to the ground and her head tilted to the side to rest against the dirty chain. Almost instantly, her hair caught in the chain and started to pull. She let out a sigh, but didn't reach up to untangle it.

Beyond the creak of the swings and the chirping of small things in the grass, Sam found herself in silence. It was peaceful. The emptiness curled up through her and settled everything floating around in her head. She could see the boy, cradled in his mother's arms, blood everywhere and eyes gazing into death. She could see the little girl, her pale skin already cold with death before her body stopped moving, her father desperately pleading with ambulance workers to bring her back to life. Frank's pale face, filled determination despite the pain Ember had caused him, knowing beyond a doubt that the new radar system would be able to prevent more deaths.

Regret and frustration clawed at her chest, making tears swarm into her eyes. Her fingers wrapped tightly around the chains. "Little kids died." The clouds breezed by overhead, unmoved by her soft words. "And if we had that radar, we'd be able to track down who was killing them."

The wind didn't answer.

"Nobody else would have to die." The swing set creaked in agreement as Sam closed her eyes and allowed the pain of her emotions to swamp her for a long few moments. "You know what, Agent F?" she whispered into the sunset, knowing the man was two miles away and not able to hear. "It was my fault. You worked for months, raised almost a million dollars for this thing, and I'm the one that broke it."

Just voicing it aloud did something. The claws of guilt blunted, their grasp slightly less painful. The wind whispered a silent question.

"I had to," she said harshly. Sitting up abruptly – losing a few strands of hair to the chain in the process – she pushed herself out of the swing and stalked away from it. A few trees near the edge of the park loomed tall and dark, their uppermost leaves burning with the sun's red light. She spun around, staring at the swings as if the swing set were the thing she was speaking to. "Don't you see, I had to." Her fingers clenched into fists. "I didn't know… I didn't think kids were going to die… Not… I didn't…"

Settling to crouch on her heels, Sam held her hands in front of her face. Darkness curled inside of her. It crackled and burned. When she closed her eyes, she could see it.

In the abyss, a tiny flare of green. Like a seed, it burst into life and started to grow. It climbed higher and higher, twining around invisible branches, leaves and flowers sprouting. A rose.

Her eyes drifted open. Little sparkles of the purest green curled around her in the darkness like fireflies. On her hands, her fingertips were glowing.

"I had to," she whispered to the nothingness. "I can't let them know…"

**To be continued.**


	5. Chapter 5

_***I am doing an Author's Notes version, filled with spoilers and explanations, on my deviantart site. Check it out if you're interested.***_

**Another update for you! I've picked up a beta for this story - LifeOfRed - so hopefully that should bring up the quality a bit and keep the updates on track. :)  
**

**And a thousand buku points to Jae B, who I think might have figured out the murderer already...  
**

**Thanks to Jae B, Winged Element, BiblioMatsuri, DannySamLover20, MsFrizzle, nycorrall, Invader Johnny, and KTrevo for the awesome reviews!  
**

**-Cori**

—5—5—

**White Noise**  
Chapter 5

-Wednesday, August 21, 2013-

—5—5—

—Danny—

Yawning, Danny tossed the blue apron into a bin in the corner of the staff room of Amity Park Wholesale Foods. It would need a good wash after all those bins of fresh fruit he'd moved from the back room and carefully stacked in the produce section. He brought a hand up to run through his hair, only he stopped and sniffed at his fingers. They smelled of fruit.

"Shower first," he muttered, cracking his back slightly and grabbing his coat out of his locker. The locker shut with a loud bang. "Well, home first. Then shower."

The clock on the wall read just past midnight. Danny shook his head, trying to decide if the second day of work had gone better than the first. While he hadn't had to pick up peanuts until all hours of the morning, the number of spiders - big spiders - that crawled out of the fruit bins had been a bit distressing.

Shuddering and ignoring the feeling of something crawling up his spine, Danny slunk out of the staff room and out the back door of the grocery store. "Bye, Fetters!" someone called. There was the slam of a car door.

Danny glanced over his shoulder at one of the other retreating employees, not bothering to call back. He wasn't much of a people-person when he was wide awake. By this time of the morning, it was far too much effort to worry about other people. He stepped out of the range of the parking lot lights and into the darkness of the midnight world. Surrounded by the scent of fruit, Danny strolled towards his rundown apartment building. His hands were stuffed into his pockets, his blue eyes watchful as he worked his way from streetlight to streetlight.

There were a few other people on the street – most of them acting drunk or high. Passing by in small groups, none of them seemed to notice his existence. But compared to their boisterousness, he was a wraith. Surrounded by shadows, his feet silent, wrapped in his black coat.

A few blocks from home, Danny reached out with his hand and started to trail his fingers over the stubby walls and smooth glass of the buildings. Cold seeped into his fingernails and little flickers of light danced in the darkness around his fingertips. The glowing motes of energy fixed themselves onto the side of the building, forming into strange patterns that flared brightly before fading into nothing.

Although not visible, they were still there. Danny could feel them, ever so slightly pressing against his mind when he was close enough. He'd marked nearly every building in the area around his apartment building over the past few days. Human wouldn't understand the markings, but to a ghost the invisible message would be loud and clear:

Mine. Stay away.

He fought back a yawn when he finally found his tiny apartment building and sauntered down the empty hallway. Some of the tenants snored through the paper-thin walls. Something ran underfoot, almost causing Danny to trip. Once locked inside his tiny apartment, Danny pushed himself under the shower, rid himself of most the fruit smell, collapsed on the bed he'd spent hours and hours cleaning, and slept.

—5—5—

One of the benefits of working evenings should have been the chance to sleep in. Danny, however, was something of a morning person. So instead of snoozing until lunch, he was out at the first crack of dawn, walking around the small town of Amity Park.

At first, his feet had taken him in random circles - past the mall, then a collection of restaurants, a movie theater, and the park. As the sun rose high in the sky, he wandered through a residential area filled with turn-of-the-century-style row houses with old-looking brick fronts and tiny gardens. He paused in front of one that had ugly neon lights that proclaimed the place FENTONWORKS. It had a strange… thing… on the roof. Whatever it was, it was made of shiny metal and covered in satellite dishes and, wait - were those canons?

"You're not another one of those freaks, are you?"

Danny tore his eyes off the residential eyesore to glance at the teenager glaring at him. He was nearly a foot taller than Danny, topped with blonde hair and wearing a garish school sports jacket. "Probably not," Danny said blandly. "I'm new in town."

"High school?"

Danny shrugged, then nodded. "I guess."

"Well, let me put you on the right path," the teenager sneered. "Those," he pointed towards the building, "are the Fentons. They're freaks who hunt ghosts and have brainwashed most of the town. Steer clear of them."

Danny arched an eyebrow, turning back to the house. "Hunt ghosts?" he repeated, his mind drifting to the two girls he'd seen at the convention center. The ones who'd pointed guns at him.

"Yup. They're nuts."

"Are ghosts a problem in this town?" Danny asked.

There was a snort. "Ghosts don't exist."

"Of course not." Danny crossed his arms and shrugged. "I was just passing through, anyways." He turned back to the teenager. The boy was staring at him with blank blue eyes. "Don't really care."

"Dash. Dash Baxter." The teenager raised his chin and glared down at him. "You play any sports?"

"Do you?" Danny's voice was sour.

"I'm captain of the football team," he said, his chest puffing out like he'd won some sort of prize.

"Good for you," Danny said, fighting back a roll of his eyes. Sports were not on his list of interests. "I gotta get going." Danny took a few steps forwards, but Dash moved to step in front of him.

"Listen." Dash's voice was low and dark. "Me and my friends? We run the school. We can make your life miserable if you don't toe the line." A finger came out to poke at Danny's chest.

Danny glanced down at the finger, then up into the boy's eyes. There was menace in Dash's face, but it was only skin deep. When push came to shove, Danny knew that Dash wouldn't stand his ground. He scowled, trying to decide if it he should just turn around and walk away. But perhaps it was better to stop this before it got started. Danny wasn't going to let himself be pushed around by a lackluster small town bully.

Finally making a choice, Danny stuffed his hands into his pockets and blinked up at Dash. "You're a big fish in a small pond," Danny said softly. "I've talked to five-year-olds more dangerous than you. What can you do… stuff me in a locker? Give me a swirly?" Danny's mouth thinned into a line, remembering his previous years of high school in Los Angeles. It hadn't been a pleasant experience, to say the least.

"Yeah, and more," Dash said, still looking puffed up and important.

"You know what I can do?" Danny asked softly, letting his mouth curl up into a little smile. "I can find out where you live. I can pick locks and disable alarms faster than you could let me borrow your house key and tell me the passcode. I can put all sorts of things in your room for your parents to find. Or police, I guess. Anonymous tips are wonderful things."

Dash had paled slightly, frowning in confusion. "What kind of things?"

With a shrug, Danny smiled. "Oh, I'm pretty creative. Drugs, needles… I hear there was a boy murdered a few days ago in the grocery store. It wouldn't be that hard to find a gun and place a tip saying I saw you there that day." Danny's smile grew. "Or I could just go for the unoriginal - put bomb supplies in your room and then call the school. Maybe leave a few notes lying around, or a blog post or two. They take those things seriously, you know. You'll be in jail for days before they figure out you're innocent."

Dash's mouth had dropped open slightly. He blinked blankly.

"Or," Danny said, his voice still light and agreeable as he took a hand out of his pocket to poke Dash in the chest. "You can just leave me alone. Your choice." He took a step to the side and strolled past the still-blinking teenager. "Later, Dash."

Walking up the sidewalk, Danny shook his head and sighed. He hated small-minded bullies. Hopefully the empty threats would keep Dash and friends away long enough for Danny to get through school. Deep inside, Danny figured they probably wouldn't. He'd probably have to repeat the performance.

He paused, looking back. Not to the empty sidewalk where Dash had been standing, but to the strange building. FENTONWORKS still glowed neon and bright a half-dozen blocks away. "I need to look into these ghost hunters," he muttered. Then, stomach growling and ready for lunch, Danny turned and took the next side street and headed back towards the main section of town.

That was when he heard it. It was almost a hum.

Drifting to a stop in front of the post office, Danny closed his eyes and listened. The sound whispered in the back of his mind, making his brain swirl and empty. Almost like some sort of hypnotic lullaby.

He was jolted to the ground. "Hey!" came an angry shout.

Danny scrambled back to his feet, glaring at the lady who'd run into him. "Watch it," Danny muttered.

"Then don't stand in the middle of the steps and take a nap," the lady snapped back. "Standing there when I went in," she grumbled darkly - more to herself as she picked up her purse and surveyed the contents. "Probably a drug addict. Stole my money. I work hard to earn my keep, unlike some of the scum in this town-"

Danny wasn't really listening to her ramble anymore. Standing there when I went in. That wasn't possible, was it? He'd only closed his eyes for a moment…

The hum was gone. He looked around, listening, but all he could hear were the normal sounds of the town bustling past, and the lady still counting her money. Danny, who had a grand total of seventy-two dollars to live on until his first paycheck came weeks from now, found his eyes fixing on her purse when he realized she was counting hundred dollar bills.

The lady coughed and put her money back in her purse. She eyed him, then turned to saunter down the sidewalk. Danny watched her go. It wouldn't be the first time he'd stolen money to survive, and he doubted he'd even know if he took a few bills. It'd make his life so much easier. His fingers itched.

But he just stood there, watching her until she was lost in the maze of streets. "I'm starting a new life," he muttered. His hands went back into his pockets. "I'm starting over and I'm doing this right."

Nodding firmly to himself, his eyes traced over the buildings, searching for the source of the hum he'd heard earlier. But everything just looked like normal city. And his stomach was growling. "Lunch." Leaving the mysterious hum behind, he walked down the street, searching for a cheap source of food. A hot dog vendor on the corner caught his interest, but as he was debating whether to get chili or chili and cheese on his hot dog, something else distracted him.

It was a party.

He crossed the street and stopped at the edge of the roped-off area, gazing up at the library. A strange gizmo that looked like a cross being a satellite dish and a microwave was being installed on the roof of the library. The party was apparently to celebrate the installation - at least, if the large banner was anything to go by. S.A.B.R.E., it seemed to be called.

Danny had little interest in the device. What had his attention was the large tables full of sandwiches and assorted snacks. A smile curled on his face as he slipped past the ropes separating the 'party' from the 'not-party' and sauntered up to the nearest table. Little trickles of coldness washed over his limbs, causing the muscles in his arms to twitch and tingle. He stretched his arm to rid it of the worst of the feeling, and then set his mind to ignoring the tingling and the goosebumps that came with being invisible.

Chewing through the sandwich – and snagging a few cookies from a tray – Danny made his way up to the mass of people near the library steps. One person, a rather large man dressed in a disaster-bright orange, was holding a microphone and talking. His voice was loud and booming. "…years of research. With this next-generation network, we'll be better able to protect the area…"

Someone bumped into him, causing Danny to stumble and drop one of the cookies.

"Hey-" the person started, only to stop and look around in confusion.

Danny snagged the cookie off the ground with an invisible scowl at the man.

"What's wrong?" someone else asked.

"Nothing," the man said after a moment. "I though I hit someone."

"You did," Danny muttered when the man finally shrugged and went on his way. "But it's okay, I'm not hurt or anything." He rolled his eyes, taking a large bite of the cookie. The chocolate melted in his mouth and Danny couldn't help the small groan. After five days of nothing but ramen noodles, this was heaven. Perhaps not one hundred percent morally correct, but completely worth it.

Stretching his arm again to rid it of the worst of the tingling feeling, Danny made his way along the edge of the crowd to the large display of treats. He eyed several things before settling on a slice of chocolate cake.

"…ghosts…"

Danny looked up from the cake. He turned around and walked closer to the group of people, still chewing contentedly. The large orange man had given the microphone over to someone else – a nice looking woman in a blue suit. Her short red hair was held back from her face with what looked like a pair of goggles. There was an air about her that made Danny focus mid-bite.

"…forty-seven occurrences just in the past month. This is becoming something of epidemic proportions. We have to rally our resources to protect ourselves from these ghosts."

Ghost hunters, of some sort? Interesting coincidence, after his chat with Dash earlier. Danny peered at the two speakers curiously, then around at all the people formed into the crowd. Ghost hunters didn't usually cause rallies of this size.

"With the Fenton Spirit Arc-Binding Ectoplasmic Radar, we'll be able to track and neutralize the ghosts like never before. With thanks to the library's generous donation of their roof space, we're able to accurately locate every ghost within a twenty block radius."

Fenton. Danny gazed at the people, connecting them with the strange house he'd seen that morning, then his eyes drifted to the crazy gizmo on the roof. Spirit Arc-Binding Ectoplasmic Radar. S.A.B.E.R. The cake was forgotten in his hand, eyes sharp as he thought through what the woman had said. Track? Locate? Neutralize? "What in the world…"

There was a spattering of applause. Applause? Danny looked around, startled. This town really took its ghosts seriously.

"And with your generous donations today, we'll be able to complete the memorial to all those who have lost their lives to the dangerous threat."

Danny blinked a few times, listening to the applause and the woman's repeated thank-you's. When people started moving, Danny got out of their way. Standing in the darkest corner he could find, still wrapped in invisibility, Danny ate the rest of his chocolate cake and thought.

He'd never heard of a town where ghost hunters were considered to be anything but completely nutcases. This town, for some reason, listened. Needed to listen. Needed so badly they were willing to give two nutjobs money. What kind of town was this?

He was startled out of his thoughts by the sight of someone peering back at him. Danny froze, knowing he was invisible at the moment, but the girl didn't look away. She just narrowed her eyes.

Her eyes were pure amethyst. They seemed to pierce into his soul and read his very thoughts. She brought a hand up to push at her frizzy black hair and tuck it behind an ear, never breaking eye contact.

It was her. From the convention center. The other girl.

Thoroughly spooked, Danny fled, leaving his plate with a few smears of chocolate cake behind. He was two blocks away before he finally realized that running down a crowded sidewalk while invisible was stupid. He bumped into the hundredth person and slowed himself to walk. He really had no proof the girl had even seen him. Perhaps she'd been looking at something behind him.

That had to have been it. Nobody could see him when he was invisible.

Letting his invisibility slowly fade away, Danny continued down the street lost deep in thought, doing his best to ignore the bone-deep ache the invisibility had caused. Ghosts that people could interact with. Ghost hunters with guns that actually worked on ghosts. A town full of people that appeared to truly believe in ghosts. A radar system that would track ghosts and neutralize them, whatever horrible thing that meant. And these Fentons…

His hands curled into fists in his pockets. Perhaps it would be best just to move. Find a new town that didn't have all these mysteries. There were thousands of towns and he could find a new apartment and a new job and it wasn't like he had anything holding him here. He wasn't sure why he'd gotten off in this town anyways. There wasn't something special about-

Humming.

Danny froze when the humming seeped into his brain. His head jerked around, peering down a dark alley. "It's that sound again," he breathed. His feet moved, pulling him into the alley with slow steps. The humming grew louder with every step. "Hello?"

His foot hit something. Danny stumbled, barely catching himself on a dumpster. "Ew," he muttered as he pulled his hands away from the dumpster, realizing he'd grabbed onto something sticky. He peered at his hand, squinting in the shadows, debating wiping it on his jeans.

That's when he noticed the thing he had tripped over. Rags? Danny took a step back, then crouched down, curious. He poked at the pile of rags, noticing that there was something hard underneath. With a glance over his shoulder, Danny held a hand out in front of him and breathed out slowly. Little flickers of green light coiled around his fingers, racing around like fireflies on merry-go-rounds. The humming seemed to get louder with his use of spectral energy, making Danny wince slightly. When he had enough light, Danny moved his hand over the rags.

He scrambled to his feet, eyes wide, when he realized it wasn't a pile of rags he'd tripped over. It was a dead body. A man, probably, and old and wrinkled. His skin looked dried and hard, like an Egyptian mummy from a horror movie. Danny took a step backwards, letting the light die away.

Danny's eyes were starting to water from the strength of the hum. He brought a hand up to press against his ear. He took another step backwards, realizing that all the little ghosts - the rats and snakes and barely-there spirits - were completely gone from the area. Eyes jerking up to stare into the darkness of the alley, Danny felt the shadows creep around him. They were dark and cold with black claws that clung to his feet.

He scrambled backwards out of the alley, his hands pressed tightly to his ears as he hurried down the street and away from the alley. "Ow," he hissed, the hum starting to die away again. Pulling one hand away from his head, he saw blood speckled against his palm. "Great," he muttered.

Slinking back towards his apartment, Danny came up with a hundred reasons to pack up and leave this freakish town as soon as humanly possible. And not one reason to stay.

—5—5—

—Sam—

Sam hated very few things - a fact that she prided herself on. She hated the empty personalities of people who thought they were better than everyone else. She hated people who hurt the innocent - human, animal, or otherwise. She hated the ghost who had taken her and ruined her life. And she hated alleys. The dark ones, where the walls felt like they were collapsing down on her from both sides, and the worst smells the city had to offer were left to ferment and fester.

Unfortunately, Tucker's text message was sending her directly towards one of those alleys. Apparently he'd picked something up on a police scanner and wanted her to check it out. Sam parked her bike a block up the street from the location he'd sent, eyeing all the cars with their flashing blue and red lights crowded along the street. Her stomach curled and clenched, forcing her to swallow and take a deep breath. Police cars rarely meant good things.

A woman in a blue suit was standing by one of those alleys, studying a small recorder in her hands as Sam walked up. Her cropped red hair was pulled back under a hat. Police tape covered the entrance to the alley.

"Mrs. Fenton?" Sam asked.

The woman looked up with a smile. "Sam," she greeted warmly.

Sam smiled back, but her smile pulled at her face oddly. She had a feeling this wasn't a smiling occasion. "What's going on?" She took a step closer, peering at the screen of the device Mrs. Fenton was holding. Little flickers of blue light represented the spectral energy in the area. At the moment, the screen showed nothing. Most ghosts left imprints that could be read for hours afterwards. The fact that there was nothing left was disturbing.

Mrs. Fenton's smile faded. "There was another death," she said with a frown. "Jack and I think it's connected to the others, but we can't find any evidence…"

"How can I help?" Sam looked up as Mr. Fenton walked out of the alley, his clothes covered in muck and grime. He walked over to one of the detectives and started talking.

"I'm afraid you can't, Sam. This is three deaths in less than a week."

Sam blinked up at her, feeling her stomach sink. "So?"

Mrs. Fenton sighed softly, then set her recording device into a pocket. Her hand reached out and settled on Sam's shoulder. "Sam, you're only seventeen. There's a ghost on the loose that's murdering people left and right." Mrs. Fenton's hazel eyes were warm as they peered into Sam's. "I'm not going to let you put yourself in danger-"

Eyes narrowing, Sam tensed. "I'm not a child-"

"You're not an adult," Mrs. Fenton interrupted. "And your parents made it very clear that they don't want you involved with this."

"But-"

"I'm sorry, but there's no arguing it. Jack and I, your parents, and Tucker's parents, we don't want you kids involved with this anymore. It's too real and too dangerous." Mrs. Fenton smiled at her again, but Sam couldn't find anything inside of her to smile back. "Go home. Go play a game with Tucker. Go read a book." Her fingers on Sam's shoulders squeezed gently before releasing. "Go enjoy being a teenager and let us deal with this."

Sam glared at Mrs. Fenton's back as the woman walked over to her husband. Sam crossed her arms over her chest, angry at not being allowed to help. "I'm not a child," she hissed, even though nobody was listening. "And you can't stop me from helping."

As she turned on her heel and stalked away, Sam dug out her cell phone. Seconds later, she could hear Tucker's voice. "Hey, Sam."

"Houston," Sam growled. "We have a problem."

**To be continued.**


	6. Chapter 6

_***I am doing an Author's Notes version, filled with spoilers and explanations, on my deviantart site. Check it out if you're interested.***_

**Thanks to LifeOfRed for betaing! :)  
**

**Thanks to mpl3, ShiroHichi891, Jae B, DannySamLover20, MsFrizzle, Winged Element, Guest, and Invader Johnny for the awesome reviews!  
**

**-Cori**

—6—6—

**White Noise**  
Chapter 6

-Thursday, August 22, 2013-

—6—6—

—Sam—

With less than a week to go before the end of summer vacation, Sam Manson found herself sitting at the kitchen table in the Fenton's home, waiting for anyone to show up from the chaos that was the basement. Her toes kicked against the floor as she gazed around the strange house. The refrigerator was brand new – the manufacturing stickers were still stuck to the front. The dishwasher was still the old one with the strange purple stain in the lower corner, the huge stack of dishes on the counter was an evidence of its 'nonworking' status. Something that looked like a relative of a potato-gun was sitting near the dishes.

She kicked her heel against the leg of the chair. It didn't make the satisfying 'clunk' that her boots did, but Sam had gotten used to taking her shoes off in the Fenton's home. She eyed the plate of chocolate chip cookies sitting on the table, barely refraining from grabbing one. There was never any telling if they were Mrs. Fenton's real cookies or Mr. Fenton's ghost 'decoy cookies'.

"Sam. What's up?"

Sam tore her eyes off the cookies to blink at the young woman who walked through the kitchen door. "Jazz, what are you doing here?"

The young Fenton sent Sam a tense smile and settled into one of the other chairs. "You know, family stuff." Turquoise-painted fingernails reached out to hover over the cookies. Then, with a pensive frown, pulled her hand back. "It's that happy time of the year, you know."

A small frown settled onto Sam's face. "What set it off this time?"

"A letter came from the high school." Jazz reached out to snag a cookie and quickly bit into it. "You know how my family works. Nobody will say anything, but everybody…"

Sam nodded. "Yeah. I know."

"So what brings you to our happy abode?"

"Just…" Sam trailed off with a sigh. Her gaze dropped to her fingernails and she started to pick at the chipping purple polish, frowning at the green beneath the polish. "All these ghost attacks."

Jazz frowned. "Sam-"

"Don't," Sam shot back as she looked up, her eyes narrowed and focused. "I already got this from your parents - and my parents! I'm not too young to help with this! I'm seventeen. Come on, I'm almost eighteen! And I've been ghost hunting for three years!"

The other girl reached out and hand and grabbed Sam's. Her fingers were warm and soft, evidence of Jazz's constant use of lotions and creams. One of Jazz's fingernails tapped against Sam's as she waited quietly. "Please stop putting words in my mouth," Jazz said after Sam huffed and sank back into her chair.

Sam felt her face warm a little. She looked away, studying the spiderweb of cracks in the kitchen window and trying to remember which ghost had done that. The dog one, perhaps.

"I'm well aware of how old you are, and how much you can handle," Jazz continued quietly. "Personally, I think you're one of the best qualified to be helping with this right now and I think, with the right support, you could do this." There was a pause as Jazz's fingers tapped on Sam's hand. "What I was going to ask is how you're handling this."

"Dead people?" Sam glanced up at her. "Yeah, it's not that big a deal-"

"No," Jazz said, shaking her head slowly. "I mean all these dead people with the anniversary of Danny's death tomorrow. There're a lot of parallels…" she trailed off, eyes searching Sam's.

Sam slowly pulled her hand out of Jazz's grasp and set her hand in her lap. Images of her best friend filled her head for a moment - of him laughing, smiling, copying from her homework while trying to eat breakfast… then remembered screams of pain that ruined the pictures. A flash of light. She shuddered as she recalled the memories. "I'm fine, Jazz." The words came out forced.

"See?" Jazz smiled at her, but there was a sadness to the smile. "You went from 'no big deal' to 'I'm fine'. I'm here to talk, you know."

"I know," Sam muttered darkly.

There was silence in the kitchen. Then a soft sigh. "I'm not going to let you self-destruct again."

Sam tensed. "I'm fine, Jazz."

Jazz hummed in her throat. "Okay. I'm just letting you know. I'm not going to let it happen again. Between Tucker and me, you'll have absolutely no say in the matter."

Sam glared, her arms crossing over her chest. But there was a bit of warmth around her heart - the smallest little bit of comfort in the back of her mind at those words. The loneliness crept back just a tiny amount. She rolled her eyes and looked away. "Whatever," she murmured.

"You remember the new ghost guy - the creepy one from the Convention Center?"

Startled at the change in topic, Sam said, "Yeah…" She looked up, at the sound of a chair scraping, then a drawer being pulled open. Jazz was standing on the other side of the kitchen, digging through a drawer. "What's in with the knives?"

"They're not knives," Jazz muttered darkly. "They're 'decoy knives', if you can believe it." Jazz shot her a harried look. "And I haven't died yet, so I'm assuming the cookies are safe if you want one."

Sam absently picked up a cookie and rolled it around in her fingers. "Mr. Fenton can't have gotten that paranoid."

"Two words: Box. Ghost." Jazz walked back over and dropped a skinny file in front of Sam. "He got into the filing system one day and Mom's files ended up halfway to Scranton. So – in the typical Fenton over-reaction, Tucker ended up having to computerize them, only then Technus decided to upload the files to WikiLeaks. So yes. We're to 'decoy knives'."

Sam shook her head, setting down the cookie, picking up the file, and paging through it. It was two pages long – and both pages were mostly empty. A fuzzy image from a security camera was in the corner of the first, the report from the sighting on the second. Purple ink dotted the page, listing data collected from the local sensors. Sam felt her eyebrows rise at the numbers, doing some quick calculating. "Seventeen? Is that right?"

Jazz shrugged. "You would have to ask Mom. But with that power level, it easily places him as the dominant ghost of the area. New king pin."

"He should be lighting up the sensors all the way across town," Sam whispered. She flipped the paper over and the vague hope there was something scribbled across the back. There wasn't. Just the one sighting.

"Freaky, huh?" Jazz took a bite of the cookie, chewing as her blue eyes gazed steadily in Sam's direction.

"This is huge." Sam breathed out and shook her head, fighting down a slightly queasy sensation in her stomach and focusing closely on the paper in front of her. She read over the short bits of information once before deciding what to say. "This… this changes all the dynamics in town. This…" A date caught her eye on the page as she shut the folder and set it back on the table. "But why didn't your parents tell me about this when they got the data days ago? When I'm out ghost hunting-"

Jazz made a noise in her throat. "Your parents don't want you ghost hunting," she said bluntly.

"Tough shit," Sam snapped. "I'm old enough to make my own decisions. And that doesn't explain why your parents…" she trailed off, then scowled. "My parents got to them."

Jazz gave her a tight-lipped smile. "It had to happen eventually."

"My stupid parents and their stupid money and their stupid 'networking'," Sam muttered furiously. She tapped her finger against the file. "I'm not stopping. I don't care what my parents or what your parents say."

"I know."

"What I'm doing is important." Sam got to her feet and stalked towards the refrigerator and back, then dropped back into the chair with a huff. Anger bubbled through her mind at the idea of ghost hunting being taken away.

"Yes, it is."

Sam eyed Jazz. "I'm not stopping."

"Of course not," Jazz said agreeably. "But you know it's not going to bring Danny back."

Sam swallowed heavily and looked away, unable to meet Jazz's gaze and murmured. "Yeah, I know."

"You're like my sister, Sam. I don't want to see you get hurt."

"I'm not going to stop."

Jazz's voice was soft. "I'm not asking you to." She reached over and touched Sam's arm. "I'm just asking you to be careful. These ghost attacks are dangerous, and I don't want to lose another sibling, alright?"

Sam glanced at Jazz. The girl's eyes were shadowed and heavy. Guilt snagged at Sam's stomach - Jazz had enough on her plate at the moment without having to worry about anything else. "I'll be careful," Sam told her, a bit of a smile pulling at her lips even as her eyes stung.

Jazz grinned, snagging the folder and dropping it back into the knife drawer. "In other news, Agent F came by yesterday morning. He was really upset about the broken computer. Said it was pushing back the launch of the S.A.B.E.R program by almost a month. Maybe two."

The guilt gave up on Sam's stomach and dug its claws into her heart. She felt her eyes start to water and her face flush. "I stopped by to talk to him at the hospital." Sam picked the cookie back up, picking at the little bits of chocolate in an attempt to distract herself long enough to escape the Fenton's kitchen. "I… I gotta go, Jazz. My parents wanted me home for lunch." Sam got up from the chair and walked over to the door, starting to stuff her feet into her boots.

Jazz leaned against the counter and tilted her head. "Sam?" At the sound of her name, she hesitated and looked up. "That's, like, three really bad lies in a row."

Sam felt her face heat up. She got her heel into her boot and grabbed for the doorknob. "Bye, Jazz." There wasn't an answer as she slipped from the kitchen and hurried away. The door banged shut behind her and she took the stairs to the sidewalk in a single jump. She didn't stop to tie her shoes until she was nearly two blocks away.

It wasn't until she reached small park next to the Nasty Burger that she remembered the cookie still clutched in her hand. Settling into a bench, she took a bite of the cookie and stared out at the passing people.

It was one of those days – those ones where the clouds hovered a bit too low in the sky and the August heat was pressing down on the people below. Nobody seemed to be in a hurry to be anywhere, least of which the school-aged kids who had five days of summer vacation remaining. Many teenagers were lying on the grass, content to waste away their last few days of complete freedom. Nobody felt the need to get up to bother the young Goth.

It left Sam in a quiet little bubble as she chewed her way through one of Mrs. Fenton's chocolate chip cookies, her mind wandering guiltily around memories of the destroyed ghost radar system. Images of the dead - three now - shot through her mind. If only she hadn't… if only she'd known… if only…

She found herself staring down at her fingernails. She'd worriedly chipped most of the purple from her right index finger, revealing the green nail underneath. Almost like it realized it had her attention, the green on her hand started to glow and swirl. "No," she told the world firmly, clenching her fist and pressing it against her thigh. "No."

Something tapped her on the shoulder. Sam looked over, her eyes hard at being interrupted, and froze when she found herself face-to-face with a rose-bush that was easily twice the size it had been. The tame little plant was now a towering five feet tall and one of the roses – beautiful and red and full of life – leaned forwards to tap her shoulder again. Soft as silk.

"No," Sam hissed, jumping to her feet and taking a few steps back. The rose-bush seemed to lean towards her. "No." It wilted slightly, drawing back in on itself like a young child who'd been told off.

People had stopped. Were staring. Pointing.

Her heart jumped into her throat. Claws gripped at her intestines and Sam started to hurry down the street, away from the rose-bush. She stuffed her hands into the pockets of her vest, making sure to keep her fingers firmly hidden from the world. "I do not have ghost powers. I do not have ghost powers," she whispered to herself, a quiet mantra as she turned the corner and headed past the library.

Then she hesitated. She gazed at the clock tower of the library as a thought drifted in her mind. Yesterday. Ghost powers. The boy. The ghost?

Nobody else had seen him, wandering around and sneaking food from the tables. He'd seemed mostly interested in the dessert table – something Sam certainly couldn't blame him for, the desserts had been delicious – but it had left Sam with interesting questions floating around in her mind. Not the least of which was why a ghost was bothering to eat. Much less quietly steal the food, then hide while enjoying it. He'd been in the middle of a ghost conference, surrounded by some of the best ghost hunters the world had to offer, and not been detected…

Slowly she pulled her hand out of her pocket and looked down at the glowing fingernails. A little flicker of green sparkled at the tip of her finger, then traced a spiraling line up her hand, leaving a green smear against her skin that looked like a vine crawling up her arm. She shuddered and stuffed her hand back into her pocket.

—6—6—

—Danny—

Wiping the lack of sleep from his eyes, Danny grabbed yet another carton of bargain-brand canned corn off the pallet. "This is my day off," he told the corn and he lugged it towards the cart. "Freddy from uptown decided to call in 'sick' at the last minute. You can thank me while you're being eaten."

"Fetters!" The voice was nasally and annoyed.

"Bert," Danny replied evenly as he settled the carton onto the cart.

The boss's assistant was stout and short, even in the thick-soled shoes he liked to wear. He peered at Danny through the pop-bottle glasses. "Aren't you finished yet? Ms. Walters has a list of things for you to get through."

Danny glanced at the cart, then at the stack of things he still needed to load, then shelve in the aisles. "Yeah, no, I'm not done yet. Soon, though."

"Keep at it," he said with a nasty twist to his voice. "You're still on training, you know. Make sure all the labels face outwards."

"Yeah, yeah," Danny muttered as the man stalked away, seemingly trying to imitate his much taller and prettier boss. "More work for less pay." He leaned against the stack of corn cans, grumbling to himself and reveling in the unfairness of it all. "It's not fair that Freddy ticks off the boss and then I have to do his list of punishment jobs."

He couldn't quite believe that he was still here, in Amity Park, after the disaster of yesterday. Dead people. Ghost hunters. That humming…

It wasn't like he had any real reason to stay. All his personal belongings were packed into his bag, and his bag was currently sitting in his locker in the staff room. He wouldn't be able to get the money back on his apartment, but in the grand scheme of things, he figured leaving this insane town was much more important than a downpayment on a crappy apartment.

And here he was. At work. Not having left yet. Danny scowled, drumming his fingers on the handle of the cart. He'd hoped to get his pay for his two days of work before he cut and ran, but Bert had made it very obvious that wasn't going to happen. Now his plan was to work the shift and… procure… the money he'd earned from the register after everyone else had left. He could be on the first bus out of here tomorrow morning.

There was a faint burning sensation in the back of Danny's eyes. He quickly blinked and rubbed at his eyes. The sensation faded, leaving Danny to let a breath out his nose and give the cart a little kick. "Fine, fine. Back to work, then."

Eight stacks of canned goods later, Danny had the cart precariously loaded and was carefully maneuvering it towards the doors leading out into the main area of the grocery store. He paused right before he reached the double swinging doors, chewing on his lip as he remembered the number of times he'd seen people dump their loads when the doors swung unexpectedly.

Cold curled in his stomach. Danny contemplated the doors for a moment, letting the feeling swirl and build inside his chest. He breathed in and held it a moment, then shook his head. "Okay," he whispered, giving in.

Energy leapt at his command like a happy puppy given permission to play. The hairs on his arm stood on end as little flickers of green light raced under his skin and curled around the handlebar of the cart. Fireflies danced in a near-invisible shield around the stacks of cans. He kept his gaze lowered, not wanting anyone to notice the identical motes of light swirling inside his eyes. The burning sensation made his eyes water.

"Let's do this." The cart squeaked as it pushed against the doors, nudging them open. He walked slowly through, the left-hand door predictably bouncing back against the stacks of cans.

The cans didn't even move.

With a bit of a grin, Danny moved the cart – squealing in protest – to the canned goods aisle and started to unload the stacks of vegetables onto the end of the row. There was something deliciously monotonous about placing hundreds of cans of corn onto a shelf.

It would have allowed him time for his mind to wander, if one of his annoying coworkers hadn't sauntered over to help. Danny eyed her with a bit-back sigh. He vaguely remembered that her name was Paulina, but it was hard for him to remember names for people he couldn't relate to. And back at the group home, there had been goldfish with more personality than this girl. "I'm supposed to help the new loser," she said bluntly, seeming to run a critical eye over how little Danny had gotten accomplished. There was an arched eyebrow.

Danny shot her a look, shaking his head slightly. "You feel like doing the peas?"

She placed a careful hand on her hip and studied him. "Do I look like someone who would bend over to put peas on a shelf? No, I didn't think so." With a huff, she flipped her hair over her shoulder. Her voice had a slight Hispanic lilt - probably faked Danny figured. "I will do the corn, as long as I don't break a nail."

"Yeah, okay," Danny said agreeably, dropping to sit on the floor. He reached out to pull some of the cartons closer, slicing them open and quietly placing the peas on the shelf. Green peas. Picked at the peak of freshness and canned on the field to preserve flavor, the can read. Danny pretended to study it, eyeing his coworker out of the corner of this vision.

'P' might have a brain the size of a pea, but there was something about her that Danny hadn't been able to place in the three shifts they'd worked together. It was almost like her aura didn't match her body.

Danny snorted and set the can on the shelf. Come to think about it, not much about 'P' matched. She had the air of a supermodel and the looks of a farm girl. She used too much makeup to cover up pockmarks on her face, which made the wrinkles around her eyes stand out more, and she ended up looking older than she was. Danny was pretty sure the thick long brown locks curling around her face were extensions. She claimed that her family was rich, she wore extremely high quality (and high-priced) clothing, and yet she was doing hourly work in a grocery store. And, contrary to the boss's assertion that she didn't hire high school students, 'P' was a high school senior.

"Ready for school?" Danny asked, attempting to make some sort of conversation.

She paused in her can stacking. Her chin went up. "I haven't decided if I'm going back to school or not," she finally said. "My papa says I don't have to if I don't want to. I did online school last year."

In the silence that followed that statement, Danny shrugged. "I'm going to go in on Tuesday and get signed up for classes."

'P' eyed him, her brown eyes hard and empty. "You'll fit in with the other losers perfectly, I'm sure."

"Yeah, I'm sure," he deadpanned, wondering if the girl didn't know any insults other than 'loser'. Mike, his group-home leader, had been more creative than that when he was completely drunk, much less when he was sober. "Can you tell me anything about the school?"

"It's loser-ville," she said flatly. "And dangerous. The high school is one of the hot spots for ghosts around town."

Danny felt his heart still in his chest, but quietly kept stacking the peas on the shelf. "Ghosts? This town really seem like a picnic spot for ghosts."

'P' snorted, somehow making it a lady-like sound. "They're horrible things. My papa says the government should step in and get rid of them, especially after what they did my sophomore year."

"What did they do that year?" The cans clinked onto the shelf in the silence for a while before he realized his cans were the only ones making noise. He glanced up at 'P', only to see her ashen white under the thick make-up and wrapping her arms around her chest. His eye brows furrowed "Are you okay?"

She jerked up to stare at him. Her brown eyes were wet and glistening. Cow-like. Her muscles were tense and anxious, her tips pressed together tightly.

"I'm sorry," Danny said after a moment, unsure of what he'd done wrong.

Slowly her arms slunk down from around her shoulders and she relaxed. There were a few breaths, her shoulders rising and sinking, then she abruptly shook her head. With a watery glare, she furiously grabbed a few cans of corn and started to stuff them on the shelf with no mind as to which way the labels faced.

Danny watched her for a beat before slowly going back to stacking his own cans of peas. "Okay…" he whispered.

With her furious help – in complete silence – the two finished stacking the cans in nearly record time. 'P' had slowly calmed down, the white expression on her face slowly fading back to its normal color. By the time the two had finished the green beans, she was even making sure to place the cans label-side out.

"Thanks," Danny offered quietly as she set the last can in place, although she wasn't that much of help.

"Loser," she muttered darkly, sending him a glare. Her breath fogged the air in front of her.

Both of them froze in place. Danny with one hand on the cart, her with her eyes crossed and watching the bits of water vapor mist away. Danny tilted his head just slightly, eyes narrowed. What the Hell…?

"Dios mio, no," she whispered, each word fogging in the air like it was January, rather than a hot day in August.

Then he felt it too. Cold seeped into the centers of his bones, stabbed into his brain like an ice cream headache, and worried itself to the tiny hairs on the back of his neck. Ripples of goose-flesh raced from his toes to his fingertips. His entire body as he felt like someone had thrown a cold water bucket on him.

The cold called to him. It sang a siren song that hummed into the depths of his soul and made his teeth tingle with anticipation. His body shifted to its toes, his heart pounding in his ears.

"What's wrong?" he asked, pretending not to know, refusing to let his breath fog in the air like it used to. He wondered if little sparkles of green were already starting to dance in his eyes.

'P' was white. Horrified terror swirled around her like mud, teasing and tempting the icy chill inside of Danny's mind. He had to swallow and dig fingernails into the palms of his hands to stop himself from shivering at the cold.

She whispered, "Ghost."

"Where?" Danny took the opportunity to twirl around, searching down the aisles. None of the other people had shown any reaction yet. The ghost was nowhere to be seen. When Danny glanced over his shoulder, 'P' was gone. The door to the back room was swinging shut behind her. "Okay," he said. "You go hide, then."

He stood still for a second, staring at the door, his head filled with questions as to how she'd known the ghost was there even before he did. He'd never met anyone that could do that before, other than himself. Then a wave of cold ripped out from his center and Danny found himself shivering. A ghost of a chill ran down his spine.

His body was anxious, ready to move. The energy whimpered and jumped around inside him, begging to be used. He shoved his thoughts about his strange coworker from his mind.

Almost slowly, he started to pace through the store. His ability to sense ghosts wasn't like a radar – it was more like a strange game of Hot or Cold. The closer he was, the colder it felt. After only a few aisles he could tell he was getting farther away, so he turned around and started in the other direction.

Then the scream sent him running. It sounded like a child.

He skidded around the last corner, pushed past onlookers gawking unhelpfully, and found himself staring down at the strangest ghost he'd ever seen floating in the middle of the produce section. The spirit was male, large and round. He looked like something out of a 60's film dressed in nearly destroyed overalls and a pillbox hat. There was a furious look on his face as he cradled a box of crackers against his chest with one hand. A young kid dangling by the ankle in his other hand was the source of the screaming. A woman lay unconscious and bleeding at his feet – probably the child's mother.

The cold inside of him snarled and reached out with sharp claws to dig into his mind. Danny felt himself shift to his toes, his hands curl into fists at the sight of another ghost in his store. His eyes narrowed as he fought back the instinctive desire to destroy the pest traipsing onto his territory.

His clearly marked territory, at that.

Danny let out a shaky breath, eyes quickly scanning the produce section of the grocery. Lacking in the tall shelving units that filled the rest of the store, dozens of people were peering over and around the displays of apples and potatoes. His eyes jumped back to the ghost.

He could feel the kid's terror from here. The way it swirled and caressed the energy inside of him was delicious. The ghost gave the kid a firm shake. Danny rocked back on his heels a moment at the pure sensation. He had to shake his head rather firmly to rid his mind of it.

"I am the Box-"

A blast of green light slammed through the air and into the errant ghost. The kid tumbled from the ghost's grasp and landed on the floor with a shriek of pain. Danny's eyes followed the ghost as it reeled backwards through a display of oranges, not disturbing a single one. There was a tiny bit of relief at that – the universe didn't completely hate him. After the spiders, Danny wasn't too interested in dealing with produce.

Someone was stalking forwards. Danny glanced at her, then froze in startled recognition. The frizzy black hair, the deep amethyst eyes. It was her again. The girl had that strange weapon in her right hand, some sort of radar gun in the other. She kept glancing at the screen.

"Ghost," she snapped. "You aren't welcome." The gun came up to focus on the oranges. "Leave."

People were quiet. The entire store seemed to be silent, except for the wails of the kid trapped in the middle of the store. Danny glanced around at the two-dozen spectators, several of them closer to the kid than he was. Nobody moved to try to grab the kid or his mother. "Chickens," he muttered. The room was practically radiating with cowardice.

Slowly, the transparent form of the pudgy man rose into the air above the orange display. "Human," the ghost scoffed, "you do not scare the Box Ghost." Danny watched the energy coalesce around the creature, forming into cube-shapes. Sparkles of blue light coursed around them. Danny's eyes narrowed. The fingernails digging into his palms felt sharper – more like claws than nails. His teeth grinding against each other and his canines felt sharper as well.

The ghost made an almost lazy gesture with its hand and the blue boxes flew through the air. The girl ducked behind a stack of shelves with a curse.

Danny's eyes widened as the boxes detonated like silent explosives. He flinched as the shelving unit slowly tipped over to tangle itself on the next aisle. There was a groan from the shelf as it settled and a chaotic jangle of items hitting the ground. "Whoa," he whispered, slightly impressed despite himself.

His eyes jerked back to the ghost, narrow and furious, only barely noticing the girl with the frizzy black hair had pulled herself out of the shelving rubble and aimed her gun at the ghost.

"Alright, I'm done." The words were barely audible, but the energy inside of him heard. It raced into existence with a shriek of delight, sending his nerves ablaze. Invisible power swirled around him, making his eyes burn with power and his teeth ache. His whole body felt like it was on fire – like he needed to be running and screaming, or dancing wildly, or trying to claw his way out of his skin.

There was an animal inside of him waiting to be freed.

The closest bin of apples started to shrivel and turn brown. Little bits of green mold formed on the onion display not much further away.

The humans were blind to it all. Only a close observer would notice the sparkling green glowing in Danny's eyes.

The ghost noticed. It spun around to stare at him, glowing eyes wild. "You," the ghost snarled, face twisting into something grotesque and inhuman.

Danny didn't reply. He didn't dare, not with all the normal humans around. But he let his eyebrow twitch upwards, a smirk slide onto his face. Crossing his arms over his chest, he stared down the ghost, forcing his body into a relaxed state. It wasn't easy to do with all the ghost energy tunneling through his human body.

Another blast from the girl's gun appeared out of nowhere, this time hitting the ghost square in the neck. Half of its neck vanished, along with a good portion of the left shoulder. The ghost howled in pain, forming more of those explosive boxes, spinning in the air to throw them towards the girl. She was staring the ghost down, her eyes furious and set, her face white.

"No," Danny whispered. One hand came up. Power surged.

Ice crackled along the floor, splintering up pieces of the tiles. Several of the lights exploded overhead. Super-chilled fruit cracked and exploded.

The ghost barely had time to open its mouth to shriek before being swallowed whole by the cold. In less time than it took to blink, the frozen energy chewed the ghost to pieces, spat out the indigestible bits, and slunk back to Danny's side. It curled back up inside his chest, shivering with delight.

Danny stared at what was left of the Box Ghost. The thing was the size of a loaf of bread and had the consistency and look of snot, quivering and broken on the floor. It seeped back and forth for a long moment before vanishing into nothingness. Back to its lair, no doubt, to regain energy and reform.

Beyond the still-crying kid, silence.

Breathing slowly, Danny crept back through the spectators – none of which looked at him twice, apparently having noticed nothing – and towards the canned goods cart in the back of the store. He pressed the energy back down inside of himself, locked it up in a vault inside his chest, feeling what he'd done in every joint in his body. Instant, temporary arthritis. Resting his body against the cart handle, Danny let out a soft groan. "Ow."

There were sirens outside now. Loud voices. People talking.

Danny grabbed the cart and pushed it back into the back room before making his way slowly to the staff room and dropping onto one of the hard couches. 'P' was sitting at the table, her face white and her arms trembling, typing away on her phone and casting deer-in-headlights looks towards the door.

"I think the ghost is gone," Danny told her as he stretched out his legs, trying his best to hide the agonized wince.

She relaxed slightly, her phone coming down a few inches and her fingers not hitting the buttons quite as quickly. She didn't say anything.

Only a few moments later, someone poked their head through the door and asked if they'd seen Ms. Walters or Bert. Danny shook his head, mirrored by 'P', and the head vanished again. He leaned his head against the wall, but curiosity took over.

"I'm going to go see what's going on," he told his Hispanic coworker, but the girl simply stared at her phone. Danny shrugged and grabbed the doorknob, hissed at the sharp pain in his wrist when he turned the knob.

Police. An ambulance. Flashing lights. He could still feel the remnants of the ghost's power hissing around the shadows like invisible snakes.

"The boss is missing. So is Bert," someone said next to his shoulder.

Danny glanced over at an older man who insisted on being called 'Charles'. He was pale. "Where'd they go?"

The man shook his head. "They'll turn up, I'm sure." He gestured at the mess of shelves with a faint grin. "Someone's got to yell at us to clean this up."

Danny bounced onto his toes, trying to push away the residual ache in his body, hoping to see past the men wandering the produce section. The large man in bright orange from the library the other day was there, waving around an item that looked like a vacuum cleaner. Another man in dazzling white was writing on a notepad, studying the scene through dark sunglasses.

A stretcher passed by on the other side of the section, the girl with the black hair lying down on it. Danny blinked in surprise and then started to worm his way around to see better. He hadn't thought she'd gotten hurt.

He hadn't gotten more than halfway before his arm was grabbed by a lithe-looking woman in a blue jumpsuit. Danny flinched when he recognized her from the library. "Hold this," she demanded, stuffing something that looked like an old-style computer monitor into his arms.

"I-"

"Hush." She pushed some wires into the front of the monitor and picked up the controls. Buttons were pressed and the woman peered closely at the screen. "Wow." The word was full of emotion. When she looked up so Danny could see her face, it was stretched into a grin. "Jack!" she called.

The orange-suite man hurried over and peered into the screen as well. The two chattered back and forth in a language Danny only barely recognized as English. Something about a 'resonance frequency' had them excited.

His arms started to protest the weight. "Um…" he cleared his throat.

Both adults looked up at him, one in surprise at even seeing him there. "Here," the man said, "I'll take it." He pulled the monitor out of Danny's hands with a grin.

"We usually have something smaller, but it met a fiery fate about a week ago," the woman said by way of explanation. "Did you see what happened here?"

Danny hesitated, then shook his head. "I was stacking cans in the back of the store," he said quietly.

The woman wrinkled her nose. "That's too bad. You!" She turned and pointed to someone else. "Come here. You witnessed this?" Both the woman and the orange man stalked off after their new target.

Danny watched them go, apparently forgotten, with a slightly arched eyebrow. "Ah… okay…" he whispered. Then he shook his head and turned around to see if he could find the girl.

Only, she was already gone.

—6—6—

—Sam—

Sam was leaning back against the chair in the emergency room, her leg immobilized by a plastic cast. Her mother, resplendent in a skimpy black dress and glittering jewelry, was flirting shamelessly with one of the male nurses. Sam could hear her giggle from the other side of the room. Scowling at her magazine, she didn't bother to look in her mother's direction.

They were waiting for the results of the X-ray to come back, although Sam was pretty sure that her ankle was broken. Settling the magazine into her lap, Sam sighed down at the plastic boot. "Yay," she whispered. "Yet another reason for my parents to get after me for ghost hunting."

The doors to the emergency room burst open, revealing another stretcher with a middle-aged man lying on top. The EMTs were hurrying, pushing the stretcher through the room at nearly a run. The blanket covering his lower half was soaked with blood, the man was howling in pain. The man's chest seemed to be splayed open, his internal organs exposed to the atmosphere.

As they rushed past, Sam felt it. Cold. Whispers.

The little tendrils of green inside of her responded ever so slightly, growing towards the dying man. And she knew, deep down inside.

Three had just become four. The killer had struck again.

**To be continued.**


End file.
